women removing clothing to sexually excite men, seems to go back at least 400 years. For example, in Thomas Otway's comedy The Soldier's Fortune (1681) a character says: "Be sure they be lewd, drunken, stripping whores". Its combination with music seems to be as old. A conclusive description and visualization can be found in the 1720 German translation of the French La Guerre D'Espagne (Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1707), where a galant party of high aristocrats and opera singers has resorted to a small château where they entertain themselves with hunting, play and music in a three-day turn: Other possible influences on modern stripping were the dances of the Ghawazee "discovered" and seized upon by French colonists in 19th century North Africa and Egypt. The erotic dance of the bee, performed by a woman known as Kuchuk Hanem, was witnessed and described by the French novelist Gustave Flaubert. In this dance the performer disrobes as she searches for an imaginary bee trapped within her garments. It is likely that the women performing these dances did not do so in an indigenous context, but rather, responded to the commercial climate for this type of entertainment. Middle Eastern belly dance, also known as oriental dancing, was popularized in the United States after its introduction on the Midway at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago by a dancer known as Little Egypt. European tradition In France during the late 19th century, Parisian shows such as the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère were featuring attractive, scantily clad, dancing women and tableaux vivants. In this environment, an act featuring a woman slowly removing her clothes in a vain search for a flea crawling on her body was seen in 1895 and possibly filmed in 1897 by the first female director, Alice Guy. This routine, Le coucher d'Yvette, inspired "French acts" in theaters and brothels in other parts of the world, seen in the U.S. city of New York as early as 1878. The first public act of striptease in modern times is credited to Parisian theater in 1894. In 1905, Dutch dancer Mata Hari, later shot as a spy by the French authorities during World War I, was an overnight success from the debut of her act at the Musée Guimet. The most celebrated segment of her act was her progressive shedding of clothing until she wore just a jeweled bra and some ornaments over her