Crowd cheers fire at Perry-Mansfield - Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School celebrates burning of its mortgage

Dance Magazine, Jan, 1995 by Jim Schwartzkopff

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colorado--On July 24, 1994, a fire burned at the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp, the nation's oldest performing arts camp. A large crowd stared in disbelief until the fire burned itself out, and then they erupted in cheers. The Friends of Perry-Mansfield, an organization formed in 1990 to purchase the camp from Stephens College, had burned their mortgage and now, according to director of development Amy Tumminello, "own the camp free and clear."

Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield, the camp's founders, met while students at Smith College. Their decision to create a summer arts camp was made while hunting bear in Colorado with Perry's father in 1912. To earn money for the venture Mansfield taught dance and Perry became a secretary for Miss Morgan's Dramatic School in Chicago. The camp opened in 1913 with twelve students.

Perry and Mansfield's partnership lasted sixty-nine years. During this time the camp employed influential artists such as Agnes de Mille (who credited local square dancing as the inspiration for her Rodeo), Merce Cunningham, Jose Limon, and Helen Tamiris. Perry-Mansfield sent touring companies to both coasts and throughout Colorado and Wyoming (by 1927 as many as four companies from Perry-Mansfield were touring simultaneously). The camp influenced the careers of young performers; and educated audiences and patrons of the arts.

In 1963 The Ladies, as the two founders were known, began "gifting" the camp to Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, because of what Perry described as "a likeness of aims and a growing body of students in common." The college assumed full control in 1967 and continued to provide a summer program where talented faculty challenged gifted students, many of them performing arts majors working for college credit.

The same vision and energy that created Perry-Mansfield in 1913 was rallied to "save the tradition" when Stephens College announced in September 1990 that it was planning to sell the property. Within two weeks a group of Routt County residents formed the Friends of Perry-Mansfield to negotiate a purchase. By year's end the group had secured a lease and funding to operate the camp for the summer of 1991. Donations, grants, loans, and the sale of a lot made it possible to complete the $1.1 million purchase and take title in August 1993. By June 1994, thanks to a major grant from the Boettcher Foundation of Denver, the camp was debt-free.

Current programming, consistent with tradition, focuses on dance, theater, music, art, creative writing, and horsemanship.