Mata Hari - Exotic Dancer and Secret Spy

Hello Dancers! This week's Friday Feature is Mata Hari, who was an exotic dancer and was also recruited to be a secret spy!

“The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word.” - Mata Harti

Mata Harti was born on August 7th 1876 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. She was born as Margaretha Geertruida Zelle to parents Adam and Antje Zelle. Mata's father Adam was a hat merchant who eventually became bankrupt due to bad investments and Antje fell ill and had died when Mata was only 15 years old. Thus, Mata and her three brothers were split up and sent to live with different relatives. In the mid-1890s, Mata had answered a newspaper ad seeking a bride for Rudolf MacLeod. Despite a 21 year age difference between the two, they wed on July 11, 1895, when Mata was just 19. Mata gave birth to two children, a daughter and a son. (The couple's son died in 1899 after he was poisoned by a household worker). By the early 1900s, Mata's marriage had begin to fizzle out. Her husband fled with their daughter and Mata decided to move to Paris. When she was there, Mata became a mistress to a French diplomat who helped her to come up with the idea of becoming a dancer. Paris in 1905 was the perfect time for Mata Hari's exotic looks and the temple dance she created by drawing on cultural and religious symbolism that she had discovered in the Indies. She billed herself as a Hindu artist, draped in veils. In one memorable garden performance, Mata Hari appeared nearly naked on a white horse. Hari was very modest about showing her body, especially her breasts, she would usually cover them with brassiere-styled beads. Completing her dramatic transformation from wife to exotic night dancer, she created her stage name, "Mata Hari," which means "eye of the day" in Indonesian dialect. Unfortunately, within a few years Mata's fantasy of stardom and sex had faded. As younger dancers took the stage, she was booked less and less. She supplemented her income by seducing government and military men; sex became strictly a financial practicality for her. Now nearing 40, and with her dancing days behind her, Mata's fell in love with a 21-year-old Russian captain, Vladimir de Masloff, in 1916. During their courtship, Masloff was sent to the Front, where an injury left him blind in one eye. Determined to earn money to support him, Mata accepted a lucrative assignment to spy for France from Georges Ladoux. Mata insisted that she planned to use her connections to seduce her way into the German high command, get secrets and hand them over to the French, but she never got that far. She met a German attaché and began tossing him bits of gossip, hoping to get some valuable information in return. Instead, she got named as a German spy, which of course, was leaked by the man she was trying to impress. Some historians believe that the Germans suspected that Mata was a French spy and subsequently set her up, deliberately sending a message falsely labeling her as a German spy — which they knew would be easily decoded by the French. Others, of course, believe that she was in fact a German double agent. Regardless, the French authorities arrested Mata for spying in Paris on February 13, 1917. When being interrogated, she swore to investigators that she never actually fulfilled the bargain and always remained faithful to France. In court, she was deemed as guilty, and her sentence, to get executed. Mata was executed by the firing squad on October 15, 1917. She had arrived at the Paris execution site with a minister and two nuns. She turned to face the firing squad, waved away her blindfold, and blew the soldiers a kiss. She was killed in an instant. There of course is still and always will be mystery that continues to surround Mata's life. From her famous story, numerous biographies and cinematic portrayals have been made to try and exemplify all the craziness of her life.

Cite: https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/mata-hari-4002.php

Hope everyone enjoyed this week's special feature. Make sure to check in next week for a new feature:) Don't forget, only 12 more days until Christmas break!