Portia Mansfield & Charlotte Perry

Charlotte Perry & Portia Mansfield
Dance and Theater Educators
(1889 -1983) (1887 -1979)
Inducted 2004

Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield founded the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp in Steamboat Springs in 1913. The school is now the nation’s oldest performing arts school and camp achieving listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

Perry and Mansfield’s work had significant influence on vaudeville, Broadway, modern dance, education, recreation and documentary motion pictures. Perry and Mansfield built the school and camp in a way that protected the environment and caused minimal harm to the natural mountain surroundings. Over the years, hundreds of camp attendees became theater and art performers, teachers, directors, writers, filmmakers, choreographers, and patrons of the arts. Perry and Mansfield’s vibrant legacy lives on in the still operating school with the same name in Steamboat.

“Creative practice through art and nature manifests in a thoughtful, insightful, and courageous life.” — Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield’s vision for their school, 1913