Sitara Devi was born in
Kolkata (then
Calcutta) on 8 November 1920, that coincided in that year with the festival of
Dhanteras, the eve of the Indian festival of
Deepavali. She was named Dhanlakshmi, in honour of the
goddess of good fortune who is worshiped on that day. Devi's paternal family was of
Brahmin heritage and from the city of
Varanasi, but had settled in Kolkata for many years. Her father, Sukhdev Maharaj, was a
Brahmin gentleman and a
Vaishanavite scholar of
Sanskrit, and earned his livelihood by teaching and performing the
Kathak dance form. Devi's mother, Matsya Kumari, and her family belonged to the community of performing artists. Her father developed a passion for classical dance and study in-depth
Bharata Natyam and
Natya Shastra and practiced and performed
Kathak in which he excelled. This passion for dance was something he passed on to his daughters, Alaknanda, Tara, and Dhanlakshmi alias Dhanno; and to his sons, Chaube and Pande. She learnt dancing from her father, who established a school to teach dancing to children including his daughters and sons. Her dancing style consisted of both Benaras and Lucknow Gharana, a combination of ‘
naaz’, ‘
nakhre’ and ‘
nazakat.'. Like the tradition of the time, Devi was to be married when she was a young girl of eight, and her child bridegroom's family wanted to solemnize the marriage. However, she resisted, and wanted to be in a school. At her insistence, the marriage did not take place, and she was admitted into Kamachhagarh High School. While at school, a dance drama based on the mythological story of
Savitri and Satyavan was to be enacted in a cultural program to be conducted by the students of the school. The school was searching amongst the students for someone to do a dance sequence embedded in the dance drama. Devi prevailed upon her teacher by showing her an impromptu dance performance. The performance clinched the role for her and she was also assigned the task to teach the dance to her co-performers in the sequence. Dhanno was re-christened as Sitara, and was entrusted with the care of her elder sister, Tara, and to impart her dancing lessons. Incidentally, Tara is the mother of famous Kathak dancer,
Pt. Gopi Krishna. By the time Devi had turned ten, she was giving solo performances, mostly during the fifteen-minute recess during movies in a cinema of her father's friend. Her commitment to learning dance left her with very little time, and she did not continue her schooling. By the time she was eleven, her family moved to
Bombay (now called
Mumbai). Soon after reaching
Bombay, Devi gave a Kathak performance in the Atiya Begum Palace before a select audience, which included
Rabindranath Tagore,
Sarojini Naidu and Sir
Cowasji Jehangir. She impressed Tagore who wanted her to give a special performance in Tata Palace. There the eleven-year-old dancing damsel studied kathak, with all its nuances, for three hours. Tagore called her to congratulate her in the traditional Indian style of giving her a shawl and a gift of Rs. 50 as a token of his appreciation. Her debut was at
Jehangir Hall (Mumbai), then the centre of metro's cultural life. When she was a twelve-year-old girl, Devi was recruited by Niranjan Sharma, a filmmaker and a dance director, and she gave dance sequences in some Hindi movies including her debut in
Usha Haran 1940,
Nagina 1951,
Roti,
Vatan 1938,
Anjali 1957 (directed by
Chetan Anand, brother of
Dev Anand). In
Mother India 1957, she performed a
Holi dance dressed as a boy, and this was her last dance in any movie. She stopped performing dances in movies, as they were adversely affecting her study in the classical dance,
Kathak. ==Personal life==