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Perry-Mansfield makes long-lasting mark on Steamboat

John F. Russell
Karina Cardella rehearses a “New Works” dance piece by Stacey Tookey during this year’s professional and college dance camp. It was Cardella’s first intensive dance camp. She made the decision to enroll at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp after winning a partial scholarship and raising money through a Go Fund Me campaign.
John F. Russell





Karina Cardella rehearses a “New Works” dance piece by Stacey Tookey during this year’s professional and college dance camp. It was Cardella’s first intensive dance camp. She made the decision to enroll at Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp after winning a partial scholarship and raising money through a Go Fund Me campaign.
John F. Russell

— 1913 — Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield (Swett) start the Rocky Mountain Dance

Camp at Lake Eldora in the mountains outside of Denver. The camp opens as a place

for dance and drama students to expand their horizons in the mountain settings of



Colorado. 

1914 — Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield move the Rocky Mountain Dance Camp to



Strawberry Park. The camp starts with 15 acres and one small cabin called Cabeen,

which was built in the 1880s.

1918 — The Main Lodge is built at the camp by Perry’s brother Bob, who sends some

of the men from the coal mines in Oak Creek to build it.

1921— The Rocky Mountain

Dance Camp becomes the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and Camp.

1922 — The Main Studio is expanded to include an art room, a faculty dining room and

a bigger kitchen.

1957 — The Julie Harris Theatre is built and named for actor Julie Harris, who was a

Perry-Mansfield camper and then a teacher from 1940 to 1942. The building was

designed by Willard Sage, who studied with Frank Lloyd Wright, and it is a fine example

of mid-century Wright style. 

1960 — The Louis Horst Studio of Dance is dedicated.

1965 — Operations and ownership of Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School and

Camp are transferred to Stephens College, a women’s college in Columbia, Missouri.

1990 — Stephens College withdrawals from Perry-Mansfield and announces it will no

longer run the camp and plans to sell the campus. Community members form Friends of

Perry-Mansfield.

1991— Friends of Perry Mansfield works out a deal with Stephens College to rent the

camp for $1 that summer. The group takes over operations.

1993 — Friends of Perry Mansfield raises the necessary funds to buy camp from

Stephens College. In July of 1994 the group holds a ceremony where they burn copies of the Mortgage on the campus ending the four-year struggle to keep the school and camp open.

1997 — The Pavilion is built on the Perry-Mansfield campus. The building is open and

airy, and like all the other rehearsal and performance spaces on campus, there are

no mirrors.

1999 — New Works program begins at Perry-Mansfield with Burgess Clark’s “Southern

Cross.”

2013 — Perry-Mansfield celebrates 100 years. Today, the camp is recognized as the

oldest, continuously-operating performing arts school/camp in the nation.


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