Equality Utah’s Allies event turns 25, features Betty Who
For the past quarter of a century, Equality Utah has put on one event each fall that acts as both a party and a means of raising money — and this year the event is being held to mark its anniversary. On Saturday, Oct. 3, the organization will celebrate 25 years of advocacy with “Allies: Take Flight” at the Hyatt Regency Salt Lake City, an evening made up of two parts consisting of a Donor Dinner followed by a Celebration Concert and After-Party featuring pop singer Betty Who, with live music provided by The Galaxy Band, DJ Cecilia and Robot Dream, and hosting responsibilities carried out by The Salt Lake Tribune columnist and comedian Eli McCann, who has been cast this year as the gala’s “co-pilot”.
The backstory behind Betty Who’s booking is unique to Utah. Before she became a headliner for Equality Utah, the Australian-born singer was better known in the Beehive State for a song than for a live performance. In September 2013, Salt Lake City resident Spencer Stout uploaded a video to YouTube in which he proposed to his then-boyfriend, Dustin Reeser, in a flash-mob-style scene inside a Home Depot, choreographed to Betty Who’s “Somebody Loves You.” The clip went viral and garnered more than 11 million views, turning an unreleased dance-pop single into a real hit. It made it to No. 44 on the overall iTunes chart and reached No. 4 on Spotify’s viral chart, a level of success that eventually secured Betty Who a contract with RCA Records. The LGBTQ community in Utah embraced her early on as she headlined the main stage at the Utah Pride Festival in 2014, and the crowd, as QSaltLake noted at the time, had a “special connection to her music” because the video originated in the state. Over a decade later, she is back in Salt Lake not as an up-and-coming artist trying to seize a moment, but as the featured act closing out Equality Utah’s silver anniversary.
Marrlo Suzzanne and The Galaxxy Band, a regular feature of Salt Lake’s queer nightlife since their first performance in April 2021, will share the stage. Marrlo Suzzanne, the band’s frontperson and vocalist, is a “cosmic rock” leader who combines glamorous theatrics with real vocal ability. The Galaxxy Band has earned a reputation for high-energy covers with a rotating cast of live drag vocalists, transforming events such as weddings, Pride celebrations, and nightclub performances into “time-warping” shows, as the band puts it. Marrlo says she discovered drag through “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and has built her career on the belief that masculinity and femininity are not opposites but rather tools to be used in the same performance toolkit.
That evolution is also exactly how “Allies” has changed over the past 25 years. The event originally was the Allies Dinner — an elegant seated banquet which, during its most crowded years, occupied over 2,000 chairs at the Salt Palace Convention Center ballroom, featuring a formal program of awards, speeches, and a single keynote speaker. It was more in the nature of a civic banquet than a concert: there was a chicken dinner, silent auctions, a room full of donors and elected officials, and finally a speech by a well-known guest — Gloria Steinem in 2016, Chelsea Handler in 2017, and Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons in 2018. As both the guest list and the aims expanded, so did the size of the venue. By 2019, with Billy Porter as the headliner, Equality Utah moved the whole event into the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Theater in downtown Salt Lake City — replacing the banquet tables with a proper stage production, including lighting design, elaborate themes (Enchanted World, Gorgeous Planet, Ocean Odyssey), and well-known entertainers such as Eddie Izzard, the Indigo Girls, Andy Bell from Erasure, and most recently Tig Notaro. The Eccles era transformed Allies into something resembling a Broadway-level gala rather than a rubber-chicken dinner — it became a full theatrical evening designed for a seated audience of well over a thousand.
This year, for its 25th anniversary, the event is once again altering its format. Instead of being a single-stage theater production, ‘Take Flight’ is now divided into a two-room, two-session event at the Hyatt Regency ballroom: first an informal Donor Dinner for major supporters, lasting from 5 to 7 p.m., during which there are reflections on the organization’s history and a fundraising appeal, and then a Celebration Concert and After-Party which opens up to the wider community — part concert and part dance club — running past 11 p.m. with DJs, drag performers and dancing until the end. It is a hybrid which combines the intimate-dinner element of the earliest Allies events with the large-scale ambition of the Eccles years, and also includes something that neither of those versions had: a real late-night after-party designed for a crowd who wants to stay and dance rather than just applaud and go home.
The importance of the party remains high. Equality Utah is entering this landmark year against a legislative backdrop that is unusually aggressive both nationally and in Utah, with efforts being made to monitor bills relating to gender-affirming care, housing protections, and gender identity. Each ticket sold at ‘Take Flight’, the organizers say, funds the policy and advocacy work ahead.
Info at equalityutah.org/allies/
