{{Short description|American performer of Indian dance (1893–1982)}} {{Cleanup|reason=Needs Wikification; Improve narrative style; |date=April 2021}} {{Use British English|date=April 2021}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2021}} {{Infobox person | name = Ragini Devi | image = | image_size = | caption = | birth_name = Esther Luella Sherman | birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1893|8|18}} | birth_place = Petoskey, Michigan | death_date = {{death date and age|df=yes|1982|1|23|1893|8|18}} | death_place = Englewood, New Jersey<ref name="Obit">{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/26/obituaries/ragini-devi-dies-dancer-was-86.html|url-access=subscription|title=RAGINI DEVI DIES; DANCER WAS 86|newspaper=The New York Times|page=10|date=26 January 1982|author=Anna Kisselgoff|access-date=1 April 2021}}</ref> | occupation = classical dancer, choreographer | years_active = | spouse = {{marriage |Ramalal Balram Bajpai|1921|1962|reason=his death}} | children = Indrani Rahman | relatives = Habib Rahman (son-in-law) | other_names = | awards = }} '''Esther Luella Sherman''' (18 August 1893 – 23 January 1982), better known as '''Ragini Devi''', was an American performer of Indian classical dance of Bharata Natyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali and Odissi, which she popularized in the West.
==Early life== Ragini Devi was born Esther Luella Sherman in 1893 in the lakeside town of Petoskey, Michigan.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Susan Ware|author2=Stacy Lorraine Braukman|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WSaMu4F06AQC|title=Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century|pages=172–173|work=Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study|year=2004|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-06-740-1488-6}}</ref> Her mother was Ida Bell Parker Sherman and her father, Alexander Otto Sherman, had Canadian-German ancestry and was an immigrant tailor. Soon after Esther's birth, her family moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Esther spent her formative years. She and younger brother, DeWitt, grew up in a clapboard house near Lake Harriet in Minnesota.<ref name="Devi Ragini">{{cite web|url=https://rachelmattson.files.com/2011/06/devinaw.pdf|title=Devi, Ragini (née Esther Luella Sherman)|author=Rachel Mattson|access-date=1 April 2021}}</ref>
==Career== Esther sought out formal instruction from a local dance teacher. By the time she graduated from high school in the 1910s, her passion for dance, now well-established, led her to engage a local man (a Russian immigrant) to teach her ballet. Soon, the pair was performing a revue of "international" dances at local cabarets and small theaters around Minneapolis. Using the stage names "Rita Cassilas" and "Todi Ragini" Sherman spent her nights performing an array of Russian folk dances and self-styled Greek-and Egyptian-themed pieces, and her days studying Indian history and culture at the University of Minnesota at St Paul (most likely as a non-matriculating student).<ref name="Devi Ragini"/>
In 1922 she moved to New York with her husband Bajpai. In New York, she found some work in silent films, but her career turned a corner on April 28, 1922, in a solo performance onstage, at Manhattan's Greenwich Village Theater. There, dancing supposedly "authentic Indian entertainments", she made her debut as "Ragini Devi", who, she lied to her American audiences, was a Kashmiri Hindu born, raised and trained to dance in India.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/leisure/story/20191230-the-inheritance-of-dance-1631746-2019-12-26|title=The Inheritance of Dance|magazine=India Today|date=26 December 2019|author=Akhila Krishnamurthy|access-date=2 April 2021}}</ref> From then on, she was known, onstage and off, as Ragini Devi (although in India, she never passed for anything other than a Westerner—albeit one with the "instincts and attitudes of an Indian").<ref name="Devi Ragini"/>
Between 1922 and 1930, her self-styled performances earned praise from American dance critics and exotica-seekers alike. In 1928, she published her pioneering first book, "Nritanjali: An Introduction to Hindu Dancing", which earned critical acclaim in India as well as in the U.S., with June 17, 1928's edition of The New York Times calling it "a happy circumstance".<ref name="Obit"/> In 1930, seizing her new international fame, Ragini Devi decided to travel to India, which she had been long eager to do. Committed, above all else, to dance, Devi left her husband and set sail for South India. Upon arrival, she gave birth to her only daughter, Indrani.
Devi traveled, seeking out teachers, eager to study Indian dance at its source. In Madras she studied Sadir (also known as Bharatanatyam) with ex-devadasi Mylapore Gowri Ammal of Kapaleeswarar Temple.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2001/10/28/stories/2001102800130501.htm|title=Rhythm of the new millennium|magazine=The Hindu|date=28 October 2001|author=Leela Venkataraman|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030211051048/http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2001/10/28/stories/2001102800130501.htm|archive-date=11 February 2003}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.hindu.com/mag/2002/09/22/stories/2002092200110400.htm|title=Dancing through their lives|magazine=The Hindu|date=22 September 2002|author=Arundhati Subramaniam|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121107160728/http://www.hindu.com/mag/2002/09/22/stories/2002092200110400.htm|archive-date=7 November 2012}}</ref> and, travelling to the Kerala, after she received an invitation from the Maharaja of Travancore to dance in the Arts Festival. She got an opportunity to meet poet Vallathol. She became the first woman to study Kathakali at the legendary Kerala Kalamandalam.<ref name="rbk">{{cite web|url=https://www.asianage.com/life/art/151019/ragini-devi-the-first-american-female-dancer-in-the-male-bastion-of-kathakali.html|title=Ragini Devi: The first American female dancer in the male bastion of Kathakali|author=Sunil Kothari|date=15 October 2019|publisher=The Asian Age|access-date=2 April 2021}}</ref> It is here where she met Gopinath, the Kathakali dancer from Travancore, who agreed to be her dance partner in her tours.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.thestatesman.com/supplements/8thday/celebrating-their-indomitable-spirit-1502772334.html|title=Celebrating their indomitable spirit|newspaper=The Statesman|date=1 July 2019|author=Tapati Chowdurie|access-date=8 April 2021}}</ref> She was eager to join the young nationalism-inspired effort to revive and reinvent Indian arts in a national tour aimed at introducing audiences in the rest of India to Kathakali.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1944/12/09/archives/hindu-dances-presented-ragini-devi-seen-in-theatre-of-all-nations.html|url-access=subscription|title=HINDU DANCES PRESENTED; Ragini Devi Seen in Theatre of All Nations Performance|newspaper=The New York Times|page=21|date=9 December 1944}}</ref> Shortening the length of the dances, streamlining the costumes, and staging them on an indoor proscenium stage, Ragini Devi and Gopinath gained prominence by transforming Kathakali into evening entertainment for urban theater-goers. From 1933 to 1936 they toured India, presenting their adapted Kathakali "dance dramas" to entranced audiences and rave reviews.
In 1938, Devi set sail (without Gopinath) for a European tour, which had barely begun when the escalation of European hostilities forced her to return, with her daughter, to the United States. In New York, she established the India Dance Theatre, a dance school and company on West 57th St. where she profited from the growing American interest in "ethnic" and "exotic" dance. In 1947 she traveled back to India (where her daughter, now married, was living) and in 1948 won a Rockefeller Foundation grant to support her ethnographic work. For the next several years she traveled the nation, documenting regional classical and folk dance forms.
Meanwhile, carrying on the family torch, Indrani became the first-ever "Miss India" in 1952. Soon she was one of India's best-loved cultural ambassadors, performing the dances her mother had fought to preserve before world leaders such as Mao and John F. Kennedy. Devi, half-jokingly lamenting this state of affairs, proclaimed "My daughter has already pushed me to the background. There was a time when I was known in my own right!"<ref>''Evening News of India'', 8 August 1952</ref> Throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, Devi lived in Mumbai (then known as Bombay), compiling the results of her research. She finally saw "Dance Dialects of India" published in 1978.
==Personal life== Esther met Ramalal Balram Bajpai (1880–1962),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sawf.org/newedit/edit03042002/bookreview.asp|title=Dancing in the Family Book Review|website=South Asian Women Forum|date=4 March 2002|author=Anjana Basu|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030412164443/http://www.sawf.org/newedit/edit03042002/bookreview.asp|archive-date=12 April 2003}}</ref> a young scientist from Nagpur, India and an activist for Indian independence. Bajpai was wanted by the British for defacing a public statue of Queen Victoria. He avoided capture and escaped to the United States where, in 1916, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota. In 1921, against her parents' wishes, Sherman married Bajpai in a civil ceremony in Wilmington, Delaware. Esther embraced Hinduism upon her wedding and took the name "Ragini Devi".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-indrani-rehman-1071521.html|title=Obituary: Indrani Rehman|newspaper=The Independent|date=18 February 1999|author=Kuldip Singh}}</ref> and together they moved to Brooklyn, New York.
The couple moved to India in the 1920s. Their daughter, Indrani Bajpai, was born on September 19, 1930 in Madras.<ref name="Indrani">{{cite web|url=https://sukanyarahman.com/tag/ragini-devi/page/3/|title=Remembering Indrani|website=Sukanya Rahman|date=24 September 2009|access-date=1 April 2021}}</ref> Who also studied to learn Bharata Natyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali and Odissi dance. Indrani was crowned Miss India in 1952, and, at the age of 15, eloped to marry Habib Rahman (1915–1995), a Bengali-Muslim architect, in 1945. The couple had a son, artist Ram Rahman, and a daughter, Sukanya Rahman (Wicks),<ref name="Indrani"/> who would also dance with her mother and grandmother. Her grandsons are Wardreath and Habib Wicks.
==Death== She left India to retire at the Actors Fund Home assisted-living facility in Englewood, New Jersey, where she died from a stroke on January 22, 1982.<ref name="rbk"/> Her New York Times obituary (January 26, 1982) noted that Devi's greatest achievement was that she "was instrumental in introducing dances of India to the U.S.".<ref name="Obit"/>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== * ''Nritanjali: an introduction to Hindu dancing'', by Sri Ragini Devi. {{ISBN|978-81-906-7243-6}} * ''Dancing in the Family: An Unconventional Memoir of Three Women'', by Sukanya Rahman. 2001, HarperCollins India, {{ISBN|81-722-3438-4}}. * ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=KRz5ykKRVAEC&pg=PA7 Dance dialects of India]'', by Ragini Devi. Motilal Banarsidass Publ., 1990. {{ISBN|81-208-0674-3}}, {{ISBN|978-81-208-0674-0}}. * ''Dancing in the Family: The Extraordinary Story of the First Family of Indian Classical Dance'' by Sukanya Rahman. 2019, Speaking Tiger Publishing Pvt. Limited. {{ISBN|93-888-7469-2}}, {{ISBN|978-93-888-7469-4}} * ''Some Dancers of India'' by Susheela Misra. 1992, Harman Publishing House. {{ISBN|978-81-851-5158-8}} * ''Dance of India in USA, 1906-1970'' by Marianne Elizabeth Jirgal Fainstadt's. 1970, UCLA * ''The Seductions of Dissonance: Ragini Devi and the Idea of India in the U.S., 1893-1965'' by Rachel Mattson
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ragini Devi}} Category:1893 births Category:1982 deaths Category:20th-century Indian dancers Category:20th-century Indian educators Category:20th-century Indian women educators Category:20th-century Indian women artists Category:American Hindus Category:American female dancers Category:20th-century American dancers Category:Converts to Hinduism from Christianity Category:Indian dance teachers Category:Indian female classical dancers Category:Kuchipudi dancers Category:Teachers of Indian classical dance Category:20th-century American women educators Category:20th-century American educators Category:American emigrants to India Category:American performers of Indian classical dance