“There were people who were confused as to why we were using a strip show to raise money for AIDS,” Mitchell, who is now a Tony Award-winning director and choreographer, said in a phone interview. Two shows and a tray of tequila shots later, the novice strippers had collected $8,000 - and the burlesque spectacle Broadway Bares was born.
Mitchell recruited seven fit fellow dancers from other Broadway shows, and on a rainy Sunday night at Splash, a since-shuttered gay club in Chelsea, they took turns undressing on the bar to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. It was 1992, near the height of the AIDS crisis. Jerry Mitchell was a 32-year-old Broadway hoofer causing a sensation each night by dancing nearly naked in “The Will Rogers Follies” when he had an idea: To shake his bare bum for a good cause.