INDIAN dancing girls 1850-1900'S

Delhi dancing girls with musicians, early 1900's




Photos, early 1900's, from Gobind Ram & Oodey Ram, Jaipur


Photos, early 1900's, from Gobind Ram & Oodey Ram, Jaipur


Photos, early 1900's, from Gobind Ram & Oodey Ram, Jaipur









A photograph of two dancing girls, by K. L. Brajbasi & Co., Patna, c.1910's




Photograph of three nautch or professional dancing girls, taken at Kabul in Afghanistan by John Burke, c. 1879-80.

Photograph of three nautch or professional dancing girls, taken at Kabul in Afghanistan by John Burke, c. 1879-80.



Studio portrait of three dancing girls taken by Nicholas & Curths in 1870, from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections. This photograph was shown at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873. The girls in the photograph are dancers as shown by the anklets of small bells they are wearing that jingle as their feet hit the floor in time to the music.



A dancing girl, Lucknow, 1870

A dancing girl, Lucknow, 1870

Nautch girls, Kashmir,an albumen print perhaps by Frith, c.1870's
Native Nautch at Delhi (or Shalimar?), 1864 by Samuel Bourne

A dancing girl photo probably by Bourne, from the 1860's


Nautch Girl [from Ceylon], from Customs of the World, ed. by Walter Hutchinson, London, 1931




                                         DANCING GIRL MADRAS

courtesan can never become a woman.’  The Urdu word, tawaif,  

translated as courtesan, is defined in at least one Urdu dictionary as “dancing 

girl, a prostitute; a female singer.”  

BECAUSE OF THIS ,NO WOMEN IN INDIA WAS READY TO ACT IN FILMS OR SING SONGS TO AN AUDIENCE IN 1900 -1930 PERIOD.THE FIRST FILM MADE IN INDIA HAD MALES DRESSED AS FEMALE ACTORS