The Chetcuti Evans Foundation has shared plans for its sixth annual Northport Tea Dance, one of Leelanau County’s biggest annual LGBTQ+ pride celebrations. The event is scheduled for Sunday, September 27 from 2-6pm at the Willowbrook Mill in Northport, and will feature performances from Monique Madison and The Kittens and music by DJ Jay Harnish.

A mid-day drag show intended to create “awareness and visibility for the LGBTQ members of our community,” the Northport Tea Dance was introduced in 2021 as a way of bringing some of the energy around Traverse City’s Up North Pride Week to Northport. Event founders Michael Chetcuti and Kyle Evans, through their Chetcuti Evans Foundation, work to provide “financial assistance and networking power to individuals and organizations in the LGBT community.”

“The Tea Dance is a family friendly event which draws a wide cross section of folks and provides an inclusive opportunity for the LGBTQ members of our community to know they have support,” Chetcuti said of the event in a press release.

In 1950s and 1960s New York, the gay community hosted tea dances – social events that took place on Sunday afternoons and served tea rather than alcohol – as a way for LGBTQ+ people to meet. At the time, it was illegal for bars in New York City to serve alcohol to gay people. As such, gatherings of the homosexual community moved outside of the city and made a point of foregoing alcohol as a means of avoiding police raids. Northport’s Tea Dance is a tip of the hat to that element of LGBTQ+ history.

This year’s performers are back by popular demand from the 2024 and 2025 incarnations of the Tea Dance. Monique Madison is a drag queen from Kalamazoo with nearly 30 years of performance experience. DJ Jay Harnish, meanwhile, is a audio/visual engineer and theatrical producer from Grand Rapids whose experience runs the gamut from Broadway tours to comedy shows.

In addition to those performances, this year’s Tea Dance will feature beverages from Baia Wine and Arbor Brewing, “served by leather clad bartenders from El Trombone.” Sharpiros Deli will also be sponsoring a hot dog cart for the event.

Tickets for the Tea Dance are $39 per person and can be purchased here.