Wikipedia
'Nartakee ' (Dancer) is a 1963 Indian social film directed by Nitin Bose. The story and screenplay were by Dhruv Chatterji, with dialogues by S. K. Prabhakar. Produced by Mukund Trivedi for Film Bharti, its director of photography was Nana Ponkshe. Director Bimal Roy did the editing for the film. Choreography was by Sohanlal, assisted by choreographer Saroj. The music director was Ravi and the lyricist was Shakeel Badayuni. The film starred Sunil Dutt and Nanda in key roles with Om Prakash, Agha, Zeb Rehman, Pritibala and Aruna Irani.
According to Nanda, as stated in an interview to journalist Ranjan Das Gupta, "It was Nitin Bose who extracted the best from me as an actress in Nartaki. He followed Satyajit Ray's style of realistic film making and advised me to use the least amount of makeup".
The story was about a dancing girl (Nanda) brought up in the Tawaif (courtesan) milieu, who wants to better herself with an education. She is helped amidst great societal clash, by a newly arrived Professor (Sunil Dutt).
Nartaki (Dancer) is a 1940 film directed by Debaki Bose for New Theatres Ltd, Calcutta. A bilingual made in Hindi and in Bengali, it had story and screenplay written by Bose, with cinematography by Yusuf Mulji. Music was composed by Pankaj Mullick. The cast had actress Leela Desai playing the title role of Nartaki. Najam also called Najam-Ul-Hasain or Najmul Hussain had left Bombay Talkies following his affair and elopement with Devika Rani, had now joined New Theatres Ltd, where he was cast in films like Anath Ashram (1937), Dushman (1939), Kapal Kundala (1939), and Nartaki. The rest of the main cast included Jagdish Sethi, Wasti and Pankaj Mullick in the Hindi version.
The story was a sixteenth century period costume drama about a courtesan who with the help of the king tries to avenge her insult against the priest of a temple monastery.