The erotic afterlives of Mata Hari
Good Dutch girl Margaretha, gone bad as Mata Hari, a Javanese Hindu temple strip-tease dancer in Belle Epoque Paris, 1903, was executed on charges of being a German spy in October 1917.
Good Dutch girl Margaretha, gone bad as Mata Hari, a Javanese Hindu temple strip-tease dancer in Belle Epoque Paris, 1903, was executed on charges of being a German spy in October 1917.
Uday Shankar
His renditions of Hindu mythology in dance were the toast of Paris in 1923. This was just seven years after Mata Hari's brutal death.
Laura Gemser
An Indonesian-Dutch actress, the dark mirror of Mata Hari's racial self-fabulism, starred in a series of Black Emmanuelle movies and reclaimed the snake dance in Black Cobra, 1976.
Debra Paget
In 1959, she played a white devadasi in Fritz Lang's Der Tiger von Eschnapur. It was a defining moment in cinematic 'Hindu temple dance'-in Technicolor.
Dutch National Ballet
In 2016, it performed Mata Hari, a major production inspired by our heroine's torrid life.
Sylvia Krystel
The Dutch star of Emmanuelle, 1974 (ask your father) brought Mata Hari to life in a 1985 biopic. It wasn't the last.
Ruth St Denis
American dance pioneer who choreographed an Indian inspired piece, Radha, in 1905. She went on to perform a series of Indic tableaux, The Cobra, Incense, The Nautch and The Yogi with Sufi musician Inayat Khan.
Greta Garbo
Portrayed Mata Hari in a 1931 biopic. It wasn't the first.
Helen
Occidentalised oriental exotic dance for generations of Indians and somehow made cabaret a desi thing (pictured: Sunehri Nagin, 1963).