Uday Shankar

Uday Shankar, born Uday Shankar Chowdhury on 8 December 1900 in Udaipur, Rajasthan, was an Indian dancer, choreographer, and Broadway performer who became a pioneering figure in modern dance in India. He died on 26 September 1977. The eldest son of a Bengali Brahmin family with roots in Narail, in present-day Bangladesh, Shankar was born while his father, Shyam Shankar Chowdhury, a barrister, was employed by the Maharaja of Jhalawar. His mother, Hemangini Devi, came from a zamindari family. Among his younger brothers were Rajendra, Debendra, Bhupendra, and Ravi Shankar, the last of whom would himself become internationally recognized for popularizing Indian classical music. Bhupendra died young in 1926.

Shankar's early education took place across multiple locations, including Nasratpur, Gazipur, Varanasi, and Jhalawar, owing to his father's frequent relocations. At his school in Gazipur, he studied music and photography under his Drawing and Crafts teacher, Ambika Charan Mukhopaddhay. In 1918, at eighteen, he traveled to Mumbai to train at the J. J. School of Art and then at Gandharva Mahavidyalaya. He subsequently joined his father in London, and on 23 August 1920, enrolled at the Royal College of Art to study painting under Sir William Rothenstein. His father, who had resigned his post in Jhalawar, moved to London, married an English woman, practiced law, and became an amateur impresario presenting Indian dance and music to British audiences.

Shankar's trajectory shifted decisively when the noted Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova attended one of the charity performances his father had organized in London. Pavlova was seeking collaborators for India-themed work, which led to the creation of two ballets: a duet with Pavlova titled Radha-Krishna and a piece called Hindu Wedding, both incorporated into her production Oriental Impressions and presented at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Shankar worked with Pavlova for approximately one and a half years before establishing himself independently in Paris. He also choreographed a ballet inspired by the frescoes of the Ajanta Caves, which was performed across the United States. Although Shankar had no formal training in any Indian classical dance form, he had been exposed from an early age to Indian classical and folk dance as well as to European ballet, and he drew on Rajput and Mughal painting styles studied at the British Museum to translate classical Indian iconography into movement. He also traveled to Rome on a Prix de Rome scholarship from the French government for advanced studies in art.

In 1927, Shankar returned to India accompanied by French pianist Simon Barbiere, who had become his disciple and dance partner, and Swiss sculptor Alice Boner, who wished to study Indian art history. The poet Rabindranath Tagore welcomed him and encouraged him to establish a performing arts school in India. Returning to Paris in 1931, Shankar founded Europe's first Indian dance company together with Boner, who had by then become one of his students. Working alongside musicians Vishnu Dass Shirali and Timir Baran, he developed a new musical framework to accompany his choreography. The company's inaugural performances took place on 3 March 1931 at the Champs-Elysées Theatre in Paris, which served as his base for European touring.

Shankar then undertook a seven-year tour of Europe and America with his troupe, known as Uday Shankar and His Hindu Ballet, under the management of impresario Sol Hurok and the Celebrity Series of Boston, organized by impresario Aaron Richmond. He made his United States debut in January 1933 in New York City alongside his French dance partner Simkie, with a reception held at the Grand Central Art Galleries. The troupe subsequently completed an 84-city tour across the country. It was under the name Uday Shankar and His Hindu Ballet that Shankar appeared on Broadway, where he performed between 1937 and 1949.

In 1936, Leonard Knight Elmhirst, who had previously assisted Tagore in building Sriniketan near Shanti Niketan, invited Shankar and his troupe for a six-month residency at Dartington Hall in Totnes, Devon. Also present during that residency were Michel Chekhov, nephew of playwright Anton Chekhov, German modern dancer and choreographer Kurt Jooss, and Rudolf Laban, the German movement theorist who had developed a system of dance notation.

In 1938, Shankar made India his permanent base and founded the Uday Shankar India Cultural Centre at Simtola, approximately three kilometers from Almora in the Uttarakhand Himalayas. He assembled a faculty that included Sankaran Namboodri for Kathakali, Kandappa Pillai for Bharatanatyam, Amubi Singh for Manipuri dance, and Ustad Allauddin Khan for music. Students and artists at the centre included Guru Dutt, Shanti Bardhan, Simkie, Amala, Zohra Sehgal, Ruma Guha Thakurta, Lakshmi Shankar, Shanta Gandhi, and his brothers Rajendra, Debendra, and Ravi. The centre closed in 1942 due to insufficient funds. In 1948, Shankar produced and starred in the film Kalpana, shot at Gemini Studios in Madras, in which he and his wife Amala Shankar both performed. The film was digitally restored in 2008 by the Cineteca di Bologna in association with The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project and the National Film Archive of India.

Shankar settled in Ballygunge, Kolkata in 1960, and the Uday Shankar Center for Dance opened there in 1965. In 1962, the Sangeet Natak Akademi, India's national academy for music, dance, and drama, awarded him its highest honor, the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship, in recognition of his lifetime contribution to the arts. In 1971, the Government of India conferred upon him the Padma Vibhushan, the country's second-highest civilian award. The style of dance Shankar developed, which fused European theatrical techniques with Indian classical, folk, and tribal dance forms, is credited with opening a new era for traditional Indian temple dance and with establishing him as a founder of modern dance in India.