Best of My Love

After intermission, the Gay Men's Chorus of Tampa Bay relaunched Out On the Dance Floor on March 21, 2026, with a buoyant performance of Nhick Ramiro Pacis's arrangement of Maurice White and Al McKay's "Best of My Love" at Jaeb Theater of Straz Center in Tampa, Florida. Originally a 1977 hit for The Emotions, the song's blend of disco shimmer and gospel uplift makes it a natural fit for an ensemble like the chorus.

Pacis's arrangement honors the original's signature elements — the airy backing-vocal stacks, the upbeat tempo, the irresistible "Doesn't take much to make me happy" hook — while giving each section of the chorus distinct, satisfying writing. The lower voices held down a solid groove on the verses, the inner voices handled the song's intricate countermelodic work, and the upper voices delivered the lead lines with a clean, joyful edge.

What stood out most in the live performance was the ensemble's command of the song's interlocking rhythms. The famous chorus, with its rapid-fire syllabic delivery, requires absolute precision to land, and the chorus delivered it with crisp diction and unified phrasing. The dynamic shaping was smart, too — the verses sat back to give the choruses room to bloom, and the bridge built tension through controlled crescendo rather than sheer volume.

Bodo's drumming and Pozenatto's keys laid down a solid disco-soul foundation underneath, with just enough rhythmic detail to keep the arrangement feeling live rather than sequenced. The Jaeb Theater's acoustics let the layered backgrounds stay transparent, and the audience picked up the energy immediately, settling in for an Act 2 that promised to dance.

As an opening to the second half of Out On the Dance Floor, "Best of My Love" was a perfect choice — sunshine in choral form, and a reset of the room's collective pulse.