शांतिदेव घोष

Born in 1910 near Chandpur in East Bengal, son of Kalimohan Ghosh — one of Rabindranath's rural-reconstruction workers — Shantideb grew up in the ashram at Santiniketan and was picked out by the poet as a teenager. He joined Visva-Bharati as a teacher at twenty and never really left: professor and head of the Rabindra music and dance department, and principal of Sangit Bhavana across two terms in the 1960s and 70s.

He travelled with Rabindranath to Sri Lanka, Java and Bali, and brought that dance vocabulary back into the Santiniketan stage productions. Suchitra Mitra and Pramita Mallick were among his students, so a good deal of how Rabindrasangeet is sung today came through him.

He wrote extensively — Rabindra Sangeet, Java O Balir Nrityageet, Nrityakala O Rabindranath, Rupakar Nandalal, and an autobiography — and received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship in 1976, the Padma Bhushan in 1984 and Visva-Bharati's Desikottama the same year.