Arunima Kumar performs at Khajuraho Dance Festival

Public Domain Photo: Kuchipudi dancer Arunima Kumar performs at the Khajuraho Dance Festival on 5th February 2010.

Statue of Shakira in Barranquilla, Colombia

Public Domain Photo: Statue of Shakira (Escultura de Shakira) in Barranquilla, Colombia.

The Colombian singer, musician, dancer, songwriter and record producer Shakira (born Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll on February 2, 1977) emerged in the music scene of Colombia and Latin America in the early 1990s. Shakira is a multitalented artist with vocal ability in Rock and Roll, Latin American and Middle Eastern music and dance influences, marked by her own original version of Belly Dance. She was born and raised in Barranquilla in northern Colombia, where there is a huge following of music groups inspired by the musical style of Shakira.

Thiruvathira Kali during Onam celebrations

Photo: Students of College of Engineering Chengannur (CEC), affiliated to the Cochin University of Science and Technology, performing Thiruvathira Kali as a part of the Onam celebrations. Thiruvathira Kali is a dance form of Kerala, photo by Arunanand T A.

Onam is the grandest festival celebrated in Kerala, India, as well as Malayali people settled or working in all parts of the world, in the month of Chingam (Malayalam calendar) may fall August-September. It is symbolic of the homecoming of the legendary King Mahabali, who once ruled his kingdom, which was the most prosperous and the happiest according to legends. The festival lasts for four or more days and it is an occasion to highlight and re-enact Kerala's culture and tradition, and among many other things include snake boat races (Vallam Kali) and perform dances like Thiruvathira Kali, Kaikottikkali, Thumbi Tullal, Kummattikali, Kathakali, Pulikali (Kaduvakali), etc.

Nymphes dansant by Adriaen van der Werff and Pieter van der Werff

Image: Nymphes dansant (Deux femmes dansant devant un berger jouant du pipeau, dit aussi Nymphes dansant), a 1718 oil-on-panel painting by Dutch painters Adriaen van der Werff and Pieter van der Werff, size 58.5 cm x 44 cm (23.03” x 17.32”), located at Musée du Louvre, Richelieu, 2nd floor, room A, Paris, France.

Pieter van der Werff was the principal pupil and assistant of Adriaen van der Werff. Nymphes dansant was a further development or improvement upon the theme of Adriaen’s painting ‘Een dansende nymf op het fluitspel van een herder’ (1718).

The Gates of Dawn

Image: The Gates of Dawn (1900), oil painting by Herbert James Draper (1863-1920)

Josephine Baker dancing The Charleston

Photo: Josephine Baker dancing The Charleston at the Folies Bergère, Paris in 1926.
The Charleston, a dance named for the city of Charleston, South Carolina, was popularized in mainstream dance music in the United States by composer/pianist James P. Johnson. It originated in the Broadway show Runnin' Wild and became one of the most popular hits of the decade.

Josephine Baker performs the Danse Banane

Josephine Baker draped in her banana costume

Josephine Baker draped in her most famous banana costume for the Danse Banane from the Folies Bergère production Un Vent de Folie in Paris in 1927.

Mata Hari on postcard

After the execution of Mata Hari at the age of 41 by the French, innumerable postcards and postal stationery have been issued by many countries to celebrate the life and dance style of the Dutch woman who was praised as the most beautiful woman of her times by many writers and critics. Throughout the world there are many restaurants, clubs, villas, companies, video games, and even computer software named after her. Her head was cut of and mummified and stored along with the heads of 100 criminals guillotined or executed by the French firing squad at the Museum of Anatomy - The Musée d'Anatomie Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière - now located on the eighth floor of the Faculty of Medicine, Paris V René Descartes University, 45, rue des Saints-Pères, VIe arrondissement of Paris, France. The rest of her body was also received here and kept there. But both were noticed as missing since time of the Second World War, all other items of the museum remaining in tact.

Mata Hari: the legend and cultural influences

Image: Mata Hari postcard

A number of postcards/view cards and art items popularizing Mata Hari became a fashion. Immediately after her execution by the French, questions rose about the justification of her execution. The idea of an exotic dancer working as a lethal double agent, using her powers of seduction to extract military secrets from her many lovers fired the popular imagination, and made Mata Hari an enduring archetype of the femme fatale.

The Hollywood film, Mata Hari (1931) starring Greta Garbo in the lead role, became the greatest hit of Garbo’s career and the top grosser of MGM that year. The film, though based loosely on real events in the life of Margaretha Zelle, who became famous with her stage name Mata Hari, the plot was largely fictional that appealed to the public appetite for fantasy at the expense of historical facts. The exciting and romantic character in this film, Mata Hari, inspired subsequent generations of storytellers. Consequently, Mata Hari was featured in more films, television stories, and in video games. Many books have been written about Mata Hari, some of them being serious historical and biographical accounts, but many others were highly speculative, deviating too far from the real life of Mata Hari.

There is a very popular statue of Mata Hari in Leeuwarden, the place where she was born in The Netherlands.

Mata Hari performing in 1906

Photo: Mata Hari performing in 1906, wearing only bra and jewelry

Mata Hari brought to the European stage a carefree provocative style of oriental dance, she picked up during her stay in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and her style was an instant hit with the audiences. Her dance style was spectacularly successful and she elevated exotic dance to a more respectable status, thereby breaking new ground in a style of entertainment for which Paris later became world famous. Her free-willed attitude and uninhibited dancing in exotic and revealing clothing made her a very popular woman. She posed for provocative photos and mingled in circles of wealthy and powerful men in politics, royalty, and military, not only in Paris but all other capitals and major cities of European countries. In that period, as most Europeans were unfamiliar with the Dutch East Indies and thought of Mata Hari as exotic, it was assumed her claims of being a Javanese princess of Hindu origin were genuine. By 1910, innumerable imitators of her exotic dance style had arisen in Paris and other European cities.

Mata Hari performing in 1905

Photo: Mata Hari performing in 1905

After returning from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) to the Netherlands with her husband Rudolf John MacLeod, Mata Hari was legally separated in 1902 (divorced in 1906), and in 1903 she moved to Paris, where she performed as a circus horse rider using the name Lady MacLeod. Struggling to earn a livelihood, she also posed as an artist's model.

By 1905, Mata Hari became famous as an exotic dancer, adopting the stage name Mata Hari. She was a contemporary of the famous dancers Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis, who were pioneers of the early modern dance movement, which looked to Egypt, India and other Asian countries for artistic inspiration. Flirtatious and openly flaunting her body, she was an instance success from her debut at the Musée Guimet on 13 March 1905.