Amala Shankar

Amala Shankar, born Amala Nandy on 27 June 1919 in Batajor Village, Magura District, Bengal Presidency, British India (in present-day Bangladesh), was an Indian dancer who performed on Broadway in 1949 as part of Uday Shankar and His Hindu Ballet. She died on 24 July 2020 in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, at the age of 101.

Shankar's father, Akhoy Kumar Nandy, raised his children with an appreciation for nature and village life. In 1931, at the age of eleven, she traveled to the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris, where she encountered Uday Shankar and his family. It was at this meeting that Uday Shankar's mother, Hemangini Devi, presented the young Amala with a saree to wear in place of the frock she had on. Shankar subsequently joined Uday Shankar's dance troupe and performed with the company across the world.

In 1939, while the troupe was based in Chennai, Uday Shankar proposed marriage to Amala. The two married in 1942. Their son Ananda Shankar, who became a musician, was born in December 1942, and their daughter Mamata Shankar, who became a dancer and later an actress, was born in January 1954. Through her marriage, Shankar became the sister-in-law of sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar.

Shankar appeared in the 1948 film Kalpana, playing the character Uma. The film was written, co-produced, and directed by Uday Shankar, who also appeared in it. In 2012, Shankar attended the Cannes Film Festival, where Kalpana was screened. She noted in an interview that she was revisiting Cannes after a span of 81 years. That same year, at the age of 92, she gave her last performance, playing the role of King Janaka in the dance drama Sita Swayamvar. As of 2012, she remained active in preserving the Shankar gharana alongside her daughter Mamata Shankar and daughter-in-law Tanushree Shankar.

Uday Shankar died in 1977, and the couple had lived separately in his final years. Shankar continued to be associated with the dance traditions she and her husband had cultivated throughout their careers together.