Editor’s Pick: ‘Broadway Bares: XXX’
Broadway Bares features more than 150 tantalizing dancers and beloved Broadway stars giving their all to raise funds for HIV/AIDS.
New York City’s widely popular “modern-day burlesque spectacular” known as Broadway Bares returns to an in-person show in 2022, which just so happens to fall exactly 30 years after Jerry Mitchell started the event to raise awareness and money for those living with HIV/AIDS.
At the time, Mitchell was a dancer only a few years into his Broadway career. He corralled six of his friends to dance provocatively and perform stripteases atop a bar, ultimately raising $8,000 for the cause.
Three decades later, Mitchell reigns as one of Broadway’s leading gay creatives, one who has racked up two Tony Awards for Best Choreography, for La Cage aux Folles and Kinky Boots.
And his little fundraiser-that-could, which he still oversees as executive producer, is now one of the nation’s leading AIDS fundraisers, easily bringing in over a million dollars every year, with more than $2 million generated in 2019, the last year prior to the pandemic.
Broadway Bares features more than 150 tantalizing dancers and beloved Broadway stars giving their all and baring not-quite-that in fully staged production numbers at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom.
Produced by and benefiting Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, this year’s “steamy 30th anniversary celebration” will be performed twice as one of the closing events of New York Pride Weekend.
With Broadway Bares: XXX, guests can expect a production combining “the best of three decades of striptease, humor, high-flying aerial work, high-energy dance, celebrity appearances, and its always prevalent proclamation of pride.” Laya Barak returns as the show’s director three years after the 2019 edition.
Among the lineup of special guests are “the queens” of current Best Musical Tony nominee Six — Nathan Lee Graham, Lesli Margherita, Bonnie Milligan, and a good friend of Metro Weekly‘s, Maulik Pancholy.
Sunday, June 26, at 9:30 p.m. and midnight. In the Hammerstein Ballroom of the Manhattan Center, 311 W. 34th St., New York. Tickets are $75, with VIP packages available offering unlimited cocktails and exclusive seating, and a pre-show private cocktail party thrown by Mitchell. Visit www.broadwaycares.org.
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