Zohra Segal's Shankar-Style Choreography in Neecha Nagar (Hindi, 1946)

For some time the only thing I knew about Zohra Segal was that she was an adorable elderly woman who had small roles in a lot of recent Hindi films. Then I learned that Zohra's life has been one of path-breaking excitement! From her burqa-clad beginnings in an orthodox Muslim family, she moved from one adventure to the next: training in Mary Wigman's famous modern dance school in Germany, dancing as a core member of Uday Shankar's troupe, marrying the Hindu Kameshwar Segal (aka Sehgal, Seghal, Saigal), choreographing dances for films and theatre, and finally acting, her greatest love, first on the stage with Prithviraj Kapoor's company and the IPTA and then later on the silver screen and television series such as The Jewel in the Crown.

Zohra w/ Ravi Shankar, Paris, 1937 (source)

Zohra's dance background and involvement with Uday Shankar's artistic legacy is fascinating and helps fill in some gaps in the data. After Shankar's wild success with Simkie in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he returned to India and added more Indians to his troupe including Zohra who became as prominent a dancer as Simkie. The period was fruitful with significant choreographies, touring, and finally the opening of Shankar's dance school in Almora in the late 1930s. Zohra's teaching and organizational skills learned in Germany proved influential in her role as the Almora school's main teacher and creator of the institution's syllabus [3]. But in the mid-1940s, Shankar's desire to devote all his energies towards making a dance film caused conflict with the long-time members like Simkie and Zohra [1]. Around this time Zohra left the dance school with fellow Almora dancer Kameshwar Segal whom she had married [3]. Due to internal conflict as well as external factors, the Almora dance school abruptly closed in 1944 and Shankar moved to Madras to begin making his dream production, Kalpana. 

After leaving Shankar's school and starting a short-lived Zohresh Dance Institute in Lahore, Zohra and her husband moved to Bombay and she choreographed for a small number of Hindi films. What inspired this post was my realization that Zohra was among a number of former associates of Uday Shankar who propagated his dance style in films. V.A.K. Ranga Rao, who considers Uday Shankar and the 1948 film Chandralekha as the two biggest influences on the development of dance in Indian cinema, notes that the students and employees of Shankar's Almora center "received the kind of allround training that was unthought of in [the] Indian dance world till then." Dancers like "Narendra Sharma, Sachin Shankar, Mohan Segal, Shanti Bardhan, Guru Dutt, Lakshmi Shankar and the couple Zohra and Kameshwar Segal who worked and learnt from him then in those halcyon days in Almora, became independent choreographers and most of them worked for films [spreading] the Uday Shankar turn of limb, taste of aesthetics around" not only in choreography but also in "make-up, costume, music, lighting, staging and showmanship."

Neecha Nagar credits

But Zohra is special because she showcased the Uday Shankar dance style in film two years before Kalpana was released. The film was Neecha Nagar(1946, Hindi), and her contribution was two beautiful dances (a "twin" and "trio" dance) with graceful side sways, undulations, arm positions, and hand gestures that look directly inspired by the Uday Shankar style as evidenced from extant footage of Kalpana. Could it be that Neecha Nagar is the earliest instance of Shankar's dance style in Indian cinema? And also an early example of the "twin dance" style? Take a look (and the woman seen resting her face on her hand? That's Zohra herself!):


Neecha Nagar is significant as the only Indian film to have won the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival (and nearly 10 years before Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali won a lesser prize at Cannes), although the opening title cards note that the dances were removed in the print sent to Cannes. Unfortunately the full print (with the dances) released in India was not a commercial success, and as Uday Bhatia notes in his excellent article, the "forgotten masterpiece" is hardly known "outside of academic circles" and "remains little more than a trivia question in the land of its origin."

Finding information about Zohra's choreography in films is difficult. In her memoir, she only talks about her film work in a general paragraph of disgust at the "debasement of art" she was asked to do in her film roles. Pages and pages are dedicated to her time at Prithvi Theatres and her association with the highly-influential Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA). What is perplexing is that she mentions the 1946 film Dharti ke Lal made entirely by IPTA members, but she does not mention Neecha Nagar released that same year which was not only also produced by the IPTA [2] but also contained her acting and dance choreography!

The best sources of information about Zohra's dance direction in films are C.S. Lakshmi's 2000 book Conversations with Women Dancers and daughter Kiran Segal's book about Zohra, Fatty. C.S. Lakshmi thoroughly interviewed Zohra about her dance background despite Zohra's surprise (exclaiming "of my fifty-five years in show biz, I have really been a professional dancer only at the beginning"). Here are some excerpts:

[Zohra] As the Zohresh Dance Institute in Lahore drew to a close,"...this beautiful sister of mine, Uzra Butt, who was already Prithviraj's leading lady contacted me at this time. Prithviraj Kapoor had just started a theatre, a year earlier. And my sister wrote and said, 'Why don't you come to Bombay and try your luck here, in films?' So, both my husband and I went to Bombay to try our luck as dancers. But the films there were so awful. The type of things I was expected to do--in one, the director came and said, 'Look there is a big bowl of roses and you come out of it in a bathing costume.' (Laughter) Uday Shankar's training was such that even parts of our body, our stomach or midriff, could not be seen. We had always worn churidar-pyjamas under our skirts. We didn't always cover the head. It depended on the type of dance, but his approach was very, very proper."
[C.S. Lakshmi]"For how many films did you do dance direction?"
[Zohra]"Well, not very many, about nine or ten in all. Baazi became a hit. Also for Nau Do Gyarah, C.I.D., Faraar, not this recent Faraar but another. Faraar made with Ashok Kumar, and Heer Ranjha. I have forgotten. It was so long ago."
[C.S. Lakshmi]"What was your experience of being a dance director in the male-dominated film world?"
[Zohra]"I didn't really like it. Not so much because it was male-dominated but because you had to, more or less, cater to what the director wanted except perhaps for Guru Dutt's films like Baazi. He had been my pupil in Almora when I was teaching. So he knew the technique of Uday Shankar and he liked it. That's why he asked me to come. So, I had no problem with him because he knew my style and he let me do whatever I wanted. But with other directors, you know, they had their own emphasis on the box-office and sex and it went against my grain and my upbringing..."

Kiran Segal's book Fatty sheds some light on the influence Zohra had on dance through her training of everyone associated with Prithvi Theatres. Kiran notes that students Suresh Bhatt and Satyanarayan later went on to give dance direction in films, and she also lists Badnam (directed by DD Keshav) as one of Zohra's film choreographies. Kiran also notes that the female dancers identified in the credits of Neecha Nagar, Ruma Ganguly (apparently the same person as Roma Ghosh, once married to Kishore Kumar) and Gopa Lal, were students of Zohra at Prithvi Theatres!

Film Credits Clockwise: Faraar/Dev Anand in Goa, CID, Baazi, and Nau Do Gyarah.

I was only able to find two other examples from Zohra's film choreography that feature the Uday Shankar-style influence: "Suno Gajar Kya Gaaye" from Baazi (1951) and "See Le Zubaan" in Nao Do Gyarah (1957). The latter is especially interesting in its subtle Shankar influences in the hand gestures and movements, the hand shimmies, the Kathakali-style hand pushes, and the rotations around the central axis--all implemented by Zohra despite the Western-style music and murder-mystery backdrop. Sneaky!


The 1950s seems to be when the other artists formerly associated with Uday Shankar began choreographing for films, such as Sachin Shankar, Narendra Sharma, and the work of Simkie. The career paths of students associated with Uday Shankar's school and film work, their influences on cinema and theatre dance, the influence of leftist groups like the IPTA, and the greater context of Indian independence and India's cultural and artistic awakening begs for further study and analysis!