Esther Luella Sherman (18 August 1893 – 23 January 1982), better known as Ragini Devi, was an Indian classical dancer of Bharata Natyam, Kuchipudi, Kathakali and Odissi, which she popularised in the west.
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).
In New York, she found some work in silent films, but her career turned a corner on 28 April 1922, in a solo performance, onstage, at Manhattan's Greenwich Village Theater.
In 1928, she published her pioneering first book, "Nritanjali: An Introduction to Hindu Dancing", which earned critical acclaim in the U.S., with June 17, 1928's edition of The New York Times calling it "a happy circumstance".
[8] Eager to join the young, nationalism-inspired effort to revive and reinvent indigenous Indian arts in a national tour aimed at introducing audiences in the rest of India to Kathakali.
In 1947 she travelled back to India (where her daughter, now married, was living) and in 1948 won a Rockefeller Foundation grant to support her ethnographic work.
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.
Esther met Ramalal Balram Bajpai (1880–1962),[11] a young scientist from Nagpur, India and an activist for Indian independence.
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.
[7] 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.".