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North Carolina School of the Arts
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The North Carolina School of the Arts is a public coeducational arts conservatory in Winston-Salem, North Carolina that grants high school, undergraduate and graduate degrees. It is one of the seventeen constituent campuses of the University of North Carolina system and offers high school, undergraduate and graduate degrees. It was founded in 1963 as a conservatory of the performing arts by then-North Carolina governor Terry Sanford and was the first public arts conservatory. The school owns and operates the Stevens Center in Downtown Winston-Salem and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
About the school
Professional schools
There are five professional schools of the North Carolina School of the Arts:
- School of Dance
- School of Design and Production
- School of Drama
- School of Filmmaking
- School of Music
General information
The School’s mission is to train students from middle school through graduate school for professional careers in the performing, visual, and film and television arts. Performance is an integral part of the training program, and students, faculty and guest artists present more than 400 public performances and screenings annually in the School’s facilities in Winston-Salem, as well as across the state and the Southeast, in major U.S. cities and overseas.
Five professional schools make up the North Carolina School of the Arts: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. With its full academic program, the School is accredited to award the high school diploma, the College Arts Diploma, the Professional Artist Certificate, and bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Students must audition or interview for admission to NCSA. NCSA is said to be one of the most exclusive arts conservatories in the world. Of the more than 1,000 students enrolled, half come from two-thirds of North Carolina’s 100 counties. Half come from 45 other states (from New York to California) and nearly two dozen foreign countries (from Germany to Japan).
Students study with resident master teachers who have had successful careers in the arts, such as the New York City Ballet and the Los Angeles Philharmonic and who remain active in their professions. Noted guest artists such as filmmaker Spike Lee and actor Mandy Patinkin bring lessons directly from the contemporary arts world. The BFA Acting program at North Carolina School of the Arts is internationally one of the toughest programs to get into, accepting approximately 28 actors a year, including no more than 10 female actors. It is often recognized as the top acting program in the United States.
Traditions
Mascot
Although NCSA has no athletic teams, students are very proud of their mascot: The Fighting Pickle. NCSA students would also take place in a homecoming game against Wake Forest University with, legend has it, the fighting pickles wearing tutus. The origin of the mascot is rather murky, although Lauren Whitaker, NCSA's director of student activities, said in an essay republished in the Kudzu Gazette
I heard a story about a North Carolina pickle company who once agreed to sponsor our homecoming football team. The mascot was selected in a show of gratitude. Legend has it that the same pickle company dropped its support of the school when its head honchos (greater gherkins?) figured out that their candidate of choice for US Senate (a conservative Republican who opposed funding for the arts and espouses that homosexuality is a sin) was not the candidate of choice among many voters registered here.[1]
Beaux Arts
The end of the year at NCSA is capped with a giant all-school party known as Beaux Arts, where the biggest attraction is the Beaux Arts Ball. Originally Beaux Arts was founded as a sort of rebel party run by the students, and the ball was actually a costume ball.[2] The festival was started in 1972 and included a large statue of a cow that was "borrowed" from a local business and became the symbol of the festival. Eventually the festival became a school-run event, as it is now, and is frequented by more high school students than college students. Until 2005 the school provided free beer to students over 21 until it was found during a school-wide audit that this practice was, in fact, illegal. Despite these setbacks the carnival and ball are still a popular event.
History
Founding
The idea of the North Carolina School of the Arts was initiated in 1962 when then-governor Terry Sanford, with help from John Ehle created the North Carolina Conservatory Committee to investigate the possibility of opening a state-supported music conservatory.[3] When the school was founded the focus was broadened to include dance and drama, and the Enabling Act of the school, passed in 1963 by the North Carolina General Assembly, founded a school for "the professional training, as distinguished from the liberal arts instruction, of talented students in the fields of music, drama, the dance and allied performing arts, at both the high school and college levels of instruction, with emphasis placed upon performance of the arts, and not upon academic studies of the arts." The North Carolina General Assembly also gave the new school $350,000. The Gray High School was bought to house the new conservatory and Vittorio Giannini, an American composer, was picked as the first president of the school (the title would later be changed to chancellor).
Growth
Composer Robert Ward became NCSA's second president following the unexpected death of Giannini in 1966. In 1968 the School of Design and Production (informally known as D&P) was created, and in 1970 a subsection of the D&P program, the visual arts program, was created as well. In addition, the school became a part of the newly formed University of North Carolina system in 1972. In 1974 Robert Suderburg became NCSA's third chancellor. During his time at NCSA Workplace building, containing the Semans Library, was opened on the NCSA campus, as well as the Stevens Center, previously the Carolina Theatre, in downtown Winston-Salem. The gala opening featured the NCSA symphony orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein, with Isaac Stern as soloist and Gregory Peck as the Master of Ceremonies. Attendees included Agnes de Mille, Cliff Robertson, Governor James Hunt, President and Mrs. Gerald Ford and Lady Bird Johnson. The Stevens Center remains NCSA's largest performance facility and is booked with either performances or rehearsals all but 80 nights of the year.[4]
Dr. Jane E. Milley was the fourth chancellor of NCSA and was installed in 1984. Although she increased faculty salaries and secured funding for a new facility dubbed Performance Place she was forced out of the school by students who found her too academic.
Alex Ewing was appointed as the fifth chancellor of NCSA in 1990. His biggest accomplishment was the establishment of NCSA's fifth arts school, the School of Film. He also helped bring the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts to the School and increased the endowment from $4 million to $15 million.
Wade Hobgood was NCSA's sixth chancellor, starting in 2000. He helped NCSA secure five new buildings, a Center for Design Innovation and free tuition for all NC high school residents in his five years tenure.
Present and future
John Mauceri is NCSA's seventh and current chancellor.[5] He was installed on July 1, 2006 and maintains an active performance career in addition to his duties as chancellor and has encouraged the teachers and deans to do so. As of 2008, he had appointed two new deans, Ethan Stiefel as the Dean of Dance and Jordan Kerner as the Dean of Film, and will shortly appoint a new Dean of Music as well.[6][7]
On April 9, 2008 the NCSA Board of Trustees voted unanimously to support a name change of the school from the North Carolina School of the Arts to the "University of North Carolina School of the Arts." The reasons given for the change were to raise the profile of the school as part of the University of North Carolina system.[8] The name change was approved by the University of North Carolina Board of Governors on May 9, 2008, the North Carolina Senate on June 24, 2008, and the North Carolina House of Representatives on July 11, 2008. The law is expected to be quickly signed into law by Governor Mike Easley and will take effect in August, 2008.[9][10] A group of alumni have attempted to register "UNCSA" as a federal trademark to block the change.[11]
Campus
The façade of Watson Hall
The school's campus consists of 77 acres in Winston-Salem, near Old Salem.[12] The school has eight residence halls -- six for college students, two for high school students, an on-campus student apartment complex and an off-campus student apartment complex within walking distance. The school has eleven performance and
screening spaces; ACE Theatre with the Main Theatre, Babcock Theatre, and Gold Theatre, Crawford Recital Hall (with a Fisk Organ), deMille Theatre, Hood Recital Hall, Performance Place with Proscenium Thrust, Catawba Theatre, and Patrons Theatre, the Stevens Center in downtown Winston-Salem, and Watson Chamber Music Hall. Performance Place is the home of the drama department, the ACE Theatre is the home of the filmmaking department, deMille theatre is the home of the dance department and Watson, Hood and Crawford halls are used by the music department. The Stevens Center is shared.
The school also has a fitness center with an interior basketball court and swimming pool, the Semans Library, the Hanes Student Commons, Workplace (adjacent to the library) which holds Visual Arts Studios as well as Offices and Studios for the School of Dance, Gray Building, which holds high school academics on the third floor and music offices and practice rooms on the first and second floors, a building holding two dance studios, a visual arts sculpting studio, a large design and production complex, a wig and makeup studio, a welcome center, and several buildings for administrative offices and college academics. A new library is in the planning stages.
Performance opportunities
NCSA offers many performance opportunities throughout the course of a school year. Dance students have three seasonal performances: Fall dance, Winter dance, and Spring dance. They also perform the Nutcracker every Christmas, and have many other minor performances throughout the school year. Music students have the chance to perform in front of their peers every Wednesday at performance hour, and students are usually in a large ensemble, such as jazz band, orchestra, opera, or wind ensemble. These ensembles each perform several times a year.
The School of Design and Production is responsible for the scenery, costumes, lighting, sound, and stage management for all shows produced by the School of Drama, two operas that NCSA produces each year through the Fletcher Opera Institute, as well as dance performances, although dance costumes are provided by the School of Dance's own professional costume shop.
Last but not least, the Film making school is host to the ACE Exhibition Complex, where students can display their work and watch others. This complex, along with the Stevens Center, is host to the RiverRun Film Festival every spring.
Summer Performance Festival
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Presenting over sixty free shows annually on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the Summer Performance Festival, funded by the state,citation needed is produced, performed and directed by students, alumni, faculty and staff. The festival offers drama, music, dance and film performances for six consecutive weeks, late June to early August, at Roanoke Island Festival Park in Manteo, North Carolina. Since its inception in 1997, the summer festival has become an important cultural resource to residents and visitors of North Carolina and an enriching educational and training experience for emerging and professional artists of NCSA.citation needed In 2007, the festival audience grew to a record attendance of over 11,000.{{fact{{
All school musicals
Once a decade, NCSA produces an all school musical- a massive, extensive, Broadway style production involving all five arts schools of the conservatory. All students have the opportunity to audition. Past all-school musicals have included "Brigadoon", "Oklahoma!", "Kiss Me Kate", and "Canterbury Tales",[13] with the most recent one being Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (for the fiftieth anniversary). The purpose of the all-school musicals are not only to provide the students with a professional experience, but also to raise money and awareness for the school. For example, for West Side Story the lead roles and Chancellor John Mauceri traveled to New York to promote the school and the school's revival of the musical.[14] West Side Story will perform at NCSA's Stevens Center from May 3-13, 2007, and then it will also go on tour to the Chicago's Ravinia Festival[15] on June 8, 2007. The production is directed by Dean of Drama Gerald Freedman, the assistant director of the original production, and conducted by NCSA Chancellor and world renown conductor John Mauceri. It has also been reported that Arthur Laurents has changed portions of the dialogue for the NCSA production.[14]
Summer session
NCSA offers five week summer courses in dance, filmmaking, visual arts, and drama, as well as two week courses in voice, guitar, and percussion, and a three week course in stage combat, to middle school, high school, and college students seeking intensive study in the arts. All summer programs are highly reputable, and a great introduction to an art form for some, and an opportunity to delve into a discipline for others.
Notable alumni
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Student organizations
NCSA has many active student organizations, including, but not limited to, the following:
- Pride (NCSA's Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender support organization)
- the NCSA Democrats
- the Kudzu Gazette (School Newspaper)
- the NCSA SGA (Student Government Association)
- the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) Student Chapter
References
External links
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North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) |
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