WINSTON-SALEM (Oct. 15, 2020) – It’s quite a challenge to play a flute or trumpet wearing a mask. And imagine trying to teach dance – or a wind ensemble – while socially distancing. 

But the UNC School of the Arts is doing just that. And as some larger schools in the UNC System have reported thousands of cases of COVID-19, the arts conservatory in Winston-Salem has reported just six cases among students and five among staff since July 1.¹ 

UNCSA Chancellor Brian Cole, who was named Chancellor in May, attributes UNCSA’s success with the virus to two factors: The sense of community at the school of 1,380 students; and clear, transparent communication with students, parents, faculty and staff.

Instruction in the arts is intimate by nature. “Even beyond that, it’s a very close-knit community,” said Cole, who came to UNCSA in 2016 as Dean of the School of Music.

But the coronavirus pandemic imposed restrictions that forced the school to adapt.

Masks? Social distancing?

“It’s difficult in dance. It’s difficult in music. It’s real difficult in design and production,” Cole said, adding that the School of Design & Production even teaches welding. (Try learning that remotely.)

A dance studio at the school, for example, now has a grid of 10-by-10 foot squares to ensure dancers maintain proper spacing.

While 20 violinists can play together in the same room, all wearing masks and properly spaced, “That’s difficult to do for a flute player or a trumpet player – any wind player,” Cole said. 

So as part of more than $1 million in preparations, instructors introduced plexiglass barriers in rehearsal spaces – cubicles of sorts – to let unmasked wind and brass players play together without sharing immediate air space. A UNCSA video demonstrates:

Similarly, the school’s A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute found vacant office space in downtown Winston-Salem with offices that have glass walls facing a central common area – so students can pour it forth in an office while the instructor watches and listens, protected, in the open central space.² 

It’s been a semester of adaptation.

UNCSA’s annual professional-grade production of “The Nutcracker” is a tradition at the Stevens Center in Winston-Salem that normally involves the schools of Music, Dance and Design & Production. But with more than 200 students involved, a live production simply isn’t possible this year.

Enter the School of Filmmaking. The school will produce a video version where students rehearse and perform in small groups as they are filmed from multiple angles – even overhead.³

“Extreme limitations will frequently catalyze unbelievable new possibilities,” Cole said. “I think one of the things we learned from this situation is just what we can do when we’re under pressure.

“It all comes down to the principles … of wearing a mask and social distancing and sanitizing.”

UNCSA HAS NOW BEGUN surveillance testing – testing a sample of students, faculty and staff periodically to see whether any asymptomatic cases pop up that might reveal a cluster in, say, a certain program or residence hall. This week the school began testing a group of 200 people each Friday.

“We’ve completed three rounds of surveillance testing and still not received (any) positive test results from surveillance testing,” Cole said.

“Surveillance testing is just one of the tools we’re using to closely monitor our campus health. We realize that we can’t let our guard down and must stay vigilant with our Community Health Standards to continue innovative work at UNCSA this semester.”

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¹ https://www.uncsa.edu/coronavirus/dashboard.aspx. 
² https://www.uncsa.edu/news/20201001-steven-lacosse-fletcher-opera.aspx.
³ https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/empty-classrooms-studios-and-stages-in-the-covid-19-era-an-arts-education-requires-an-even-greater-leap-of-faith/2020/08/19/b744b32c-de7c-11ea-b205-ff838e15a9a6_story.html.