In 2012, when Amala Shankar walked the red carpet at Cannes to attend the screening of her restored film Kalpana , she jokingly described herself as “the youngest film star you have seen at Cannes this year”. She was 93 years old then. Amala Shankar was indeed very young when she first visited France. She was 11 when she first visited Paris in 1931 with her father and met Uday Shankar at the International Colonial Exhibition. Later on, for decades, Amala Shankar with her illustrious partner Uday Shankar took Indian dance to a global platform.
The eminent danseuse passed away in Kolkata on Friday morning. She was 101. Wife of classical dancer Uday Shankar, she was awarded by West Bengal government’s Banga Bibhusan award in 2011 for her contributions to the field of art. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressing condolences over her death and said that Amala Shankar had achieved international acclaim, rising over boundaries of State and country through the form of dance. The final rites of the artiste were performed at a city crematorium with full state honours
Born Amala Nandy on June 27, 1919 in Jessore, Bangladesh into a merchant family, her father Akshay Kumar Nandy was a gold trader.
“It was at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who knew about her interest in dance, who convinced her father to send Amala to the Uday Shankar Dance Academy in Almora. Netaji also sent both of them as cultural ambassadors to Europe,” Sugata Bose, Netaji's grand nephew and eminent historian, told The Hindu . She married Uday Shankar in 1942.
Her first performance was in the production titled Kaliya Daman ,staged in Belgium in 1931.
Amala Shankar acted in the film Kalpana (1948), the only film made by Uday Shankar. The film revolves around a young dancer’s dream to set up a dance academy. Recalling her performance in the film, director and actor Aparna Sen described Amala Shankar as the epitome of grace. “Once, when she was in her nineties, she told me to make a film and said that she wanted to dance for one last time,” Ms. Sen said.
A versatile woman, Amala Shankar took to painting and also wrote. She painted using her fingers and nails, and would use toothpicks and not paint brushes.
She remained active till her nineties. Her last performance was the dance drama Sita Swayamvar at the age of 92, in which she played the role of King Janaka.
Many prominent artists and film personalities from Kolkata recalled the artiste’s 100th birth anniversary celebrations in Kolkata on June 27, 2018. Exhibitions of her photographs and paintings were curated and a film on the lives of Amala Shankar and Uday Shankar was screened. Award winning filmmaker Gautam Ghosh recalled attending the events.
“I had heard innumerable stories from her. How she went around the world before World War II in a ship. She had written a book about her…. The preface of the book was written by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose,” Mr. Ghosh said.
Sreenanda Shankar, granddaughter of the artiste, said the family celebrated her grandmother’s 101th birthday last month. “This is the end of an era,” Ms. Shankar wrote on social media.
Amala Shankar’s daughter Mamata Shankar said that she passed exactly the way she wanted to, without bothering anyone. “She died in sleep,” the daughter said.
