Perry-Mansfield School of Dance and Theatre

Abstract

The Perry-Mansfield School of dance and theatre, founded by Charlotte Perry and Portia Mansfield in 1914, and still in operation, was among the first American performing arts institutions to offer a wide curriculum of theatre and dance training. It predates the famous Denishawn school, widely considered to be the first such programme, by a year. If the importance of a school can be measured by the pervasive influence of its students and teachers, the Perry-Mansfield school is undeniably of great significance to the history of American performing arts. Consider this partial list of Perry-Mansfield students, instructors and alumni: Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Jose Limon, Agnes de Mille, Hanya Holm, Valerie Bettis, Harriette Ann Gray, Eleanor King, Mary Hinkson, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Louis Horst, Daniel Nagrin, Fred Matthews, Julie Harris, Lee Remick, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Pleasant. Charlotte Perry (1889-1983) and Portia Mansfield1 (1887-1979) met in 1910 while both women were students at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Mansfield had expressed an interest in dance as a young girl, entertaining guests informally with improvisations and ballroom-derived dances in the lobbies of hotels managed by her father in various cities throughout the eastern United States. While the family was in residence in Chicago and New York City she was exposed to theatre and developed a keen interest in it, attending neighbourhood playhouses and Broadway shows. It was as a student at Smith, however, that she received her first formal training in dance. In addition to studying Delsarte technique as part of elocution classes, Mansfield studied what was known as the Gilbert Method.2 Lucile Bogue, in her book Dancers on Horseback, relates the following information about the style gleaned from interviews with Mansfield: