Madonna reigns over an elated crowd with New York Pride performance

From EW.com:

She came, she sang (two songs), she raised $200,000 for LGBTQ causes with a few asks and a finger snap: That’s about the gist of Madonna‘s appearance Thursday night in New York City at the luxe cocktail-lounge-turned-floor-show of the Boom Boom Room, though it hardly begins to cover the surreal star-spangled chaos inside.

A VIP crush of attendees – everyone was on the list, sweetie, and still hundreds couldn’t get beyond the golden door – crammed into the Art Deco jewel at the top of the Standard Hotel, beautiful sardines in glitter and leather and impossible shoes. Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen were there; so were Lance Bass and Adam Lambert and Billy Eichner. Zachary Quinto played MC (and matched the last $25,000 donation).

The champagne was free, but they all had to wait till nearly 1:30 a.m. for the lady of the very late hour to make her appearance. Until then, the room released its pent-up energy to ecstatic ’90s-heavy set lists from Misshapes, Kaytranada, Honey Dijon, and Eli Escobar under a flashing video loop – it premiered simultaneously in Times Square – and blood-red projections of words like “Courage” and “Resist.”

Around hour four, it took courage to resist the urge to go home; when the opening notes of Vogue finally rang through the sound system though, day jobs and half-drunk cocktails were thrown aside as the crowd surged toward the makeshift stage at the center of the bar. (Essentially, it was the bar.) Surrounded by a latex-and-fishnet phalanx of dancers, Madonna emerged in orchid-pink elbow-length gloves (a nod to Girls gone by?) and a Pixar-blue bob, poured into a sort of PG-13 lederhosen still emblazoned across the back, perplexingly, with a rhinestoned “Not My President.”

Her vocals on Hung Up were nearly drowned out by shouting voices, and the full call-and-response that followed. She accompanied I Don’t Search I Find with a little light voguing, pelvic swirls, and a playful hump of a cabinet stacked with glassware, then stopped for a while to talk about her love of New York and the importance of Pride and how if we can’t stand the heat we should really stay out of the kitchen. (In fact, the room was pleasantly ventilated; but you know, metaphors.)

Read the full story by Leah Greenblatt at EW.com.