Abundance of talent on display at Alpha Academy concert

After seeing the beautiful artwork and the excellent singing, dancing and acting from the girls of the Convent of Mercy Academy (popularly called ‘Alpha’) on Saturday afternoon, patrons of the school’s Evening of the Arts would surely have concluded that the institution has “an abundance of talent.”

That’s the phrase used by Ian Stone, head of the Visual and Performing Arts Department at the institution and one of the organisers of the function. It was an opinion shared by the school’s principal, Kali McMorris. She told me that the evening – one of the events in the year-long celebration of the school’s 125th anniversary – was to both encourage the students to express their talents and raise funds for the building of a 21st-century visual and performing arts centre where those talents could be developed.

She said that Alpha was in redevelopment mode with the encouragement of the Sisters of Mercy, the institution’s sponsors, and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information. Some of the buildings on the compound were old and needed to be demolished and replaced with modern structures.

“We want a facility not only for the arts subjects in our curriculum, but outside it as well. It could be income-generating with soundproof rooms for music and studios for dance and drama. We need to cater to all our students’ talents, not only the academic ones.”

Under the general title ‘Created to Inspire’, the performing arts concert was divided into six themed segments: ‘Created to Inspire Memory’, ‘Created to Inspire Faith’, ‘Created to Inspire Wisdom’, ‘Created to Inspire Strength’ ‘Created to Inspire Reflection’ and ‘Created to Inspire Fun’.

Contributing to the concert were the teachers of the performing arts department: Jason Storer (music); Michelle Rhoden-Ferguson, (dance) and Camiel Effs-Salmon (drama). Storer arranged a number of the songs for the choir and led the live band that accompanied the singing and provided music between the acts. Rhoden-Ferguson choreographed several of the dances, and Effs-Salmon wrote the dramatic items.

Special guest performers

A number of special guests also performed, including alumna Mary Isaacs, a well-known recording artiste, and QueCee, a finalist in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s Gospel song Competition. The young singer-composer performed Longevity, a song from his upcoming album of the same name.

But probably the most memorable performer was grade-nine student Shanice Blake, who wrote and acted in a number of items. The first was God’s Side, a one-person drama telling the story of an inner-city youth, ‘Sean’, and his family. Though the piece needed a clearer structure and more help from a director, it told a powerful story of a boy whose mother was 16 when she got pregnant for an area leader (she was later shot dead in a bar) but who did well enough in school to get accepted to university. Unfortunately, the story ends in tragedy, with the narrator eventually declaring that she wanted to be on “God’s side”.

Another of Blake’s pieces, You Love Follow, which was performed by a speech choir, was also about life in the inner city. The characters were young people who followed bad company and ended up hurt or dead. The items showed that Blake is a talented writer and actress. Other girls showed they possessed those talents and were also gifted dancers.

The performing arts items were seen and heard in the huge McAuley Hall, but Stone got an adjoining room to mount an impressive exhibition of the artwork of his older art students. The room was ablaze with colourful paintings, drawings and clay containers of varying shapes and sizes.

Stone, who has been teaching at the school for 26 years, said that his department guides students from grade seven to the CSEC level in the areas of: drawing, graphics, painting and mixed media, sculpture and ceramics, and textile design. He said that many of the students go on to study at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

The year of celebration began on May 1, and other events were seminar for students on the care of the environment and the reopening of the digital-learning lab in the library. Still to come is the Labour Day beautification of the sixth-form block.