Shakuntala Nagarkar

Shakuntala Bai Nagarkar, known across Maharashtra as Shakubai and as a queen of traditional lavani, died at her home in Nimgaon near Ahilyanagar on 22 September 2026. She was 66 and had lived with cancer for several years. Hindustan Times, Lokmat, Sakal and other Indian outlets remembered her as a Sangeet Bari artist who carried an older, song-driven form of lavani into theatres, workshops and documentary memory long after commercial banner shows had pulled the dance toward spectacle.

She was born in 1960 into a Kolhati farming family in Ahmednagar district. Her mother, Chhabu Bai Nagarkar, was herself a lavani dancer, and in 1968 took work at Bombay's historic Pila Haus. Shakuntala left school early, trained briefly in Kathak with Govind Rao Nikam, and put on her first heavy ghungroos as a child performer in Beed in 1971. By 1974 she was dancing at Lalbaug's Hanuman Theatre in Mumbai under Kathak guru Vasantrao Ghatge, learning repertoire by listening, watching rivals and holding eye contact with audiences in the competitive Sangeet Bari circuit.

Sangeet Bari theatres staged short evening turns of singing and dancing to dholki, tabla and harmonium, then private baithaks for patrons. Shakuntala built a powerful singing voice and a teasing, flirty stage presence that drew customers from far afield. In 1993 she won a state-organised lavani competition in Akluj, Solapur. After a brief retreat to motherhood in the mid-1990s she returned through theatre rather than the old houses, starring in Sakhi Mazi Lavani with Madhu Kambikar and in Rangi Rangala Lokarang with Keshavrao Badage, and refining the delicate abhinaya of elders such as Yamuna Bai Waikar and Roshan Bai Satarkar.

National platforms followed. She performed at the National School of Drama's Bharat Rang Mahotsav in 1999 and on an ICCR Festival of India tour in Cairo in 2003. The Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for 2008 recognised her as a traditional and folk artist in lavani; President Pratibha Patil conferred the honour in 2009. Later collaborations with writer-director Bhushan Korgaonkar, including Lavani ke Rang and Love and Lavani, brought Sangeet Bari into contemporary theatre. In 2023 she won Best Actor in a Lead Role (Female) at the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards for Lavani ke Rang.

Diagnosed with lung cancer around the start of the Covid pandemic, the same disease that had taken her mother, she continued to perform through chemotherapy. Her last public show, in April 2025, was at a wedding marking a same-sex couple's thirtieth anniversary. She is survived by three children; her daughter Shraddha shared the stage with her in later years and became her primary caregiver. Maharashtra's folk world mourned an artist who insisted that folk performers deserve the same respect as classical stars, and who danced until the end.