Dr. Brian Kelly has been ranked among 5280 Magazine’s top Denver dentists every year since 2007. He’s made more than $150,000 in free dental care available to Colorado stage artists since 2017. And, in retirement, he’s recently joined the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless to provide essential dental care for the unhoused.

Stewart Tucker Lundy, an actor with the disability-affirmative Phamaly Theatre Company, calls Kelly “an earthly angel.” But you can call him Denver’s Dancing Dentist. Most everyone does.

Kelly was accepted into the American Ballet Theatre in New York as a teenager and danced alongside Mikhail Baryshnikov in the Broadway musical “American Dance Machine” in 1978. He auditioned to join the original Broadway company of “A Chorus Line” on his 21st birthday – and got in. After three years with the iconic show in New York and around the country, Kelly was cast in the Broadway production of “The Pirates of Penzance.”

“But the day I started rehearsal was the day they posted their closing notice,” said Kelly, who found his true calling – and a pathway toward real-world stability – from an unexpected source: “My dentist suggested that I consider dental school myself,” said Kelly. ”And I hate dentists!”

Still, he enrolled at nearby Hunter College to take his prerequisite medical courses when life threw him another curveball – he was cast in the Broadway production of “La Cage Aux Folles.”

But that would be his fourth and final Broadway production. Kelly moved to Boulder and graduated second in his dentistry class at the University of Colorado in 1989. He holds the distinction of being the only dentist to have achieved perfect scores on the National Board Exams for Dentistry, Parts I and II. And he’s almost certainly the only dentist ever to have played a “Cagelle” dancer.

Kelly has occasionally returned to local stages, with appearances at the David Taylor Dance Theatre, Aurora Fox, The Candlelight in Johnstown and the Arvada Center, where he played Cosmo in “Singin’ In the Rain,” Chip in “On The Town,” Benny Southstreet in “Guys and Dolls” and, most recently, Harold in “The Full Monty” back in 2006.

On Friday, Kelly will step back onto a stage for the first time in 17 years when he appears as Benny Van Buren, manager of the Senators, in the Arvada Center’s “Damn Yankees.” Like the president – minus the sideburns, he says. Van Buren provides one of the four parts of harmony on the classic showtune, “(You Gotta Have) Heart.”

Rehearsal, said Kelly, has been exhausting. “I’m not used to this!” he said with a laugh. The fun for Kelly is performing in front of an audience, and the camaraderie with his fellow (and mostly much younger) actors – on and off the stage.

He says “Damn Yankees” will be an excellent show. Robert Anthony Jones, the devil who’s lookin’ for a soul to steal, “is a brilliant comedian,” local actor Adriane Leigh Robinson, who plays naughty temptress Lola, “has pipes like you won’t believe,” and Jeffry Denman’s choreography “is staggering,” said Kelly, who also serves on the board for the Denver Actors Fund.

But when “Damn Yankees” closes on May 7, Kelly says he will be happy getting back to what truly gives him joy: Sticking his hands in other people’s mouths.

“The thing I love most about dentistry is that I can make someone smile,” he said, “and with beautiful teeth.”

Two ongoing labor disputes

Two separate, lingering labor disputes are (so far) unlikely to disrupt upcoming programming, but … one never knows. Last week, Actors’ Equity – the union the represents 51,000 stage managers and actors – issued a strike threat against The Broadway League. It’s been demanding a new contract covering touring productions since mid-January. That includes most of the musicals presented by the Denver Center at the Buell Theatre. Three major demands: Increased wages; increased per diem stipends for union members while on the road to accommodate the rising cost of food; and better health insurance.

Essentially, the union’s executive director and lead negotiator is now authorized to call a strike on all Broadway national tours if he deems it necessary. Union president Kate Shindle thought the two sides were close to a deal but now tells the Hollywood Reporter they aren’t even close.

The Denver Center, whose next scheduled union touring production is “Les Misérables” (May 10-21), issued a statement saying, essentially: “We are hopeful that a deal can be reached between the parties.” In the meantime, the Denver Center has “Anastasia” coming from April 14-16, but that is a non-union tour – which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Meanwhile, a very complicated and longstanding impasse at Central City Opera involves a dispute over whether the company’s dozen or so studio training artists should be covered by the same American Guild of Musical Artists union contract that governs pay for the company’s mainstage performers, directors, stage managers and apprentices. Those who say yes want back pay issued to the company’s youngest training artists for outside work done for the company last summer. Insiders and observers alike are on pins and needles waiting to see if those who are contracted to direct the upcoming mainstage summer shows call for a work stoppage just as creative preparations are starting to get underway.

Grawlix: Podcast winner of the week

One of the best – and most definitely the funniest – local podcasts is called “The Grawlix Saves the World,” an effort by the local comedy supertrio of Adam Cayton-Holland, Ben Roy and Andrew Orvedahl to better the world by bettering themselves … and they outbettered themselves with this week’s episode, titled “A River Runs Through Them.”

For each episode, the three fortysomething dads take on a different challenge – while taking comic shots at each other. These challenges are always sincere and yet sometimes patently absurd – like when they put a dubious theory to the test that exposing one’s perineums (look it up!) to direct sunlight might bring measurable health benefits. (It didn’t).

But this week’s thought-provoking (and funny) episode was the kind that really can make anyone listening a better person. In a show of solidarity with their increasingly vilified transgender friends, Cayton-Holland challenged his fellow dads to go a week without gendering … well, anyone. And they invited trans comic River Butcher to help them through the basics of understanding what we’re all (hopefully) trying to do right now, and that’s just … do better.

Butcher probably did more good for the Grawlix’s listenership in just a few smart sentences than a week’s worth of gender training sessions at your office might. Like: “We don’t say ‘preferred pronouns’ anymore,” Butcher said. “It’s just ‘pronouns.’ I don’t ‘prefer’ to be right-handed. I’m just right-handed.” Added Orvedahl: Don’t assume a person’s gender based on past identifications. They change.

It’s a fascinating, friendly, illuminating and wickedly funny episode. Everyone should listen to it – and be the better for it.

“I love that we are learning as we go,”said Cayton-Holland. “That’s what being a human is.”

BDT Stage’s grand plans for ‘Sound of Music’

Things are moving at warp speed at BDT Stage, which is preparing to open one last, big, spectacular staging of “The Sound of Music” on April 29 before its new owners scrape the 46-year-old building for luxury housing. All season, Artistic Director Seamus McDonough has found lots of innovative ways to feature the company’s most beloved veteran performers, and for “The Sound of Music,” he’ll do just that by rotating in different actors to play the role of Franz throughout the run, which goes through Aug. 19.

Here’s the breakdown: AK Klimpke (April 29-May 26), Brian Burron (May 27-June 14), Stephen Turner (June 15-18), DP Perkins (June 21-July 2), Matthew D. Peters (July 12-16), Brian Jackson (July 19-30) and Brian Norber (Aug. 2-19). The lead roles will be played (throughout) by McKayla McDonough (as Maria) and Scott Severtson (as Von Trapp).

Meanwhile, sad news from BDT: Pianist Jody Copeland Sarbaugh, one of the big three who opened the then-Boulder’s Dinner Theatre with Ross Haley and Doug McLemore in 1977, has passed away at 87. Jody was instrumental in getting BDT off the ground, and she continued to help steer the ship with her leadership until her retirement in 1996,”McDonagh said. “Her warmth and love are what made BDT a family.”

In an oral history of the theater for the Boulder Library, Sarbaugh described a night at BDT this way: “It’s not an evening of theater; it’s not an evening of dinner; it is an evening of entertainment – and we want people to feel pampered from the moment they arrive until they leave.”

Briefly …

The Kirkland Museum, which opened at 13th Avenue and Pearl Street back in 2003, marked its 20th anniversary on April 2, having moved to its permanent home next to the Denver Art Museum in 2008. The DAM is paying tribute to its neighbor by hanging the Vance Kirkland painting “Timberline Abstraction” from 1950 on level 7 of the Martin Building …

Lyle Lovett and his large band will be playing at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony on June 28. Presale begins at 10 a.m. Thursday at axs.com …

And finally: Colorado’s Elusive Ingredient will host an immersive and interactive screening of the Tim Burton movie “Beetlejuice” with a live shadowcast at 9:30 p.m. Saturday, April 15, at the Studio Loft above the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. A shadowcast is when live performers are integrated on stage in front of the screen, and the undead surround you in the audience. Tickets at axs.com.