Eminent Kathak Sitara Devi died in Mumbai on Tuesday after prolonged illness, her son-in-law confirmed. She was 94. Sitara Devi was on ventilator and her condition was serious on Monday while she was admitted to the Jaslok Hospital. “Her funeral will take place Thursday morning. We are waiting for her son who has gone abroad for a show,” Rajesh Mishra, told IANS.

Sitara Devi died due to kidney failure. The 94-year-old danseuse has been fighting for her life for the last 5 weeks since she was admitted to the Cumballa Hill Hospital and Heart Institute in Mumbai. She was admitted with some abdominal and pancreatic complications and was operated about three weeks ago.

About Sitara Devi :

A recipient of prestigious awards like Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, Padma Shri and Kalidas Samman, she was born Dhannolakshmi in the family of Brahmin ‘kathakar’ Sukhdev Maharaj in Kolkata in 1920. Sitara Devi was first married to director K Asif of Mughal-e-Azam fame and later to Pratap Barot. She has bagged honours like India Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011 for her immense contribution to the classical dance genre for six decades.

By the time Sitara turned 11, the family moved to Mumbai, where she impressed Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore with a three-hour solo recital. Tagore offered her a shawl and Rs 50 which Sitara refused and instead sought his blessings instead to become a great dancer. Tagore described her as ‘Nritya Samragini’, meaning the empress of dance, after watching the performance. The epithet continues, and she is still described as the Kathak queen.

The characters around her came live in her dance. “By training, I am just a ‘kathakar’ of Krishna—leela (tales of Krishna),” the danseuse used to say. Kathak, which literally means ‘katha’, is a narrative drama which evolved out of the Krishna temples of hinterland to scale the pinnacle of glory in the Muslim courts. Sitara Devi’s roots were inextricably woven to the tradition of ‘kathakars’, the early Kathak dancers.

She was know for her passion for dancer and joy for life

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