She instead came to Lahore and was forced to seek shelter in the Red-light area of Lahore as a
Nautch girl.
A handout photo provided by Bourne and Shepherd shows professional
nautch dancers performing around 1899 Image Credit: New York Times
63, 94) shows how the Bharatanatyam revival functioned not only as "a revivification", but also as "a re-population", "a re-construction", "a re-naming", "a re-situation" and "a re-storation" whereby "dance underwent a profound metamorphosis from
nautch to bharata natyam, from 'untouchable' activity to national artform and finishing-school desideratum for young women of marriageable age." Davesh Soneji offers a critique of the caste logics of the Bharatanatyam revival in Unfinished Gestures: Devadasis, Memory, and Modernity in South India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
A young Emperor Shah Alam II watches a '
nautch' performance - British depiction from the 18th century
These performances promoted imperial unity primarily through a female corps dramatique whose costumes depicted military uniforms, Egyptian slaves, Indian
Nautch girls, Zulu Warriors, Chinese handmaidens, and Moroccan and Spanish gypsies (Pritchard and Yeandle 169).
During 70s and 80s sexy cabaret numbers,
nautch girls, sky-high heels, loud makeup and exaggerated hairstyles, all these things belong to the fraternity of vamps and item girls like Helen, Bindu and Aruna Irani, who dominated the Indian film industry.
During the colonial period the dancing girls are seen as "
Nautch Girl": the word "
nautch" is an anglicised form of Hindi/urdu word "nach" derived from the Sanskrit word "nritya." The
nautch girls play a crucial cultural interactive role between the native and the early English settlers and influence upper class women who try to imitate them.
This phenomenon was best highlighted by the Salman Khan-starrer Dabangg where a cop (Khan) is seen gyratings to the moves of a
nautch girl (Malaika Arora Khan) in a police station in UP.
Madhuri looks enthralling in her character of Begum Para, which is assumed to be a
nautch woman, while Huma plays her friend.
"Rajjo is a story of a
Nautch girl who wants to be a dancer and she finally becomes a very big classical dancer.
CTRESS Kangna Ranaut has been signed on to play a mujra dancer (
nautch girl) in director Vishwas Patil's ambitious film Rajjo.
Denis and Ted Shawn's Denishawn modern dance company, indicated in part by the fact that the young Collins was taught a version of the company's "exotic" East Indian "
nautch" dance.
nautch - an intricate traditional dance in India performed by professional dancing girls