Ayşe Nene

Ayşe Nene — Biography

Ayşe Nene, born Kiash Nanah on 10 February 1936 in Beirut to an Armenian family, was crowned a beauty-pageant winner at 15 and, in 1954, took up dancing at Istanbul's Kervansaray casino, catching the eye of its manager Orhan Boran.

She rose to fame in Italy after an impromptu striptease at a party at the Rugantino nightclub in Rome's Trastevere district on 5 November 1958; photographs by Tazio Secchiaroli, published in L'Espresso, turned the episode into a national scandal, and she was briefly detained before an anonymous wealthy benefactor's bail spared her deportation. The dance is credited with inspiring the famous scene in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita. Soon after, she became engaged to journalist Saro Balsamo, then later married film director Sergio Pastore. She went on to appear on screen in The Lebanese Mission, I nuovi mostri, Images in a Convent, Storia di Piera and King David. In 1984 she was stripped of her Turkish citizenship over claims she had aided the ASALA militant group, and she worked on an unfinished book titled Vatansızlar (The Stateless). She died of cancer in Rome on 29 January 2014.