Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

Left: Singer Ken Boothe in performance at 'Pickney Love' at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel.   Right: Members of the Clonmel Cultural Group dance the Maypole at 'Pickney Love', held at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston, on Tuesday. - Photos by Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer

With the stroke of a bow on a violin, a sustained breath into a saxophone, the deliberate twirl of long tassels on a maypole, in dramatic speech and delightful dance, children and young adults helped give 'Pickney Love at Christmas' on Tuesday evening.

The capacity audience was attentive at times applauded and screamed through the benefit concert's fifth staging in the Jamaica Pegasus hotel's ballroom. The loudest and most continuous howls were, however, reserved for penultimate performers, One Third.

The Capital and Credit Merchant Bank event will benefit Dare to Care, which houses children living with HIV/AIDS.

The smooth moving, triple smiling outfit came in the second segment of the programme, along with George Nooks, an exquisitely white-clad Alaine, who delivered a soulful O Holy Night, full red-clad closer Ken Boothe, who gave his nimble-footed all to a significantly reduced audience, a smiling Nickeisha Barnes, who lit up the room as she turned the lights down low, and Pop Song Contest winner Omar Reid, all supported by the Fabulous Five Band.

Only 'big man'

There were screams for Wayne Marshall, the only 'big man' in the first segment of the programme, who swung from party mode to consideration for the Diamonds in the Rough with ease.

And it was in that first segment, after the opening harmonies of the Capital and Credit choir going up to 8:00 p.m., led by 'Pickney Love at Christmas' conceptualiser Michelle Wilson-Reynolds, that the young ones made their artistic contribution to the young ones in true pickney love.

With a bow and a smile the colourfully-clad Clonmel Cultural Group did the quadrille, first with a slow number and then picking up the pace on the second, the girls' skirts swishing and their male partners dropping legs.

Charlemont High's Joylene Alexander delivered a Honor Ford-Smith poem in which a mother chastised a wayward daughter, laughter greeting the line "I don' know where I get yu from. Yu mus' be a trowback". And there was more laughter for "why God give me a child with hair like yours, can't even curl".

Whoops

There were whoops when Gabrielle Waite (hair pulled back in a bun over her small, streamlined figure in jade green dress) came on stage to the opening strains of Me and Mrs. Jones. There were more screams when Jayed Jones (in black tailcoat) joined her, the howls rising for the lifts that were a part of the dance from the Wolmer's Dance Troupe pair. Nadje Leslie delivered Linstead Market on the violin, swaying, smiling and strumming as she went down to Solas Market, the audience cheering at her lateral movement.

The tights-clad ladies of the Wolmer's Dance Troupe went hip hop and dancehall, dropping moves as Sean Paul requested "Give it up to me". And after Wayne Marshall's extended performance, Clonmel returned for the girls to weave a multicoloured web around the pole held up by a male quartet, the Wolmer's dancers returning to dance within the circle of ribbon revellers to bring up intermission.

'Pickney Love at Christmas' was hosted by Francois and Elva from FAME FM.