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Madonna’s Celebration Tour Hits Madison Square Garden: The 5 Best Moments

She loves New York — after all, other places make her feel like a dork.

During Tuesday’s show, Madonna took an extended moment to pay tribute to Ellen Matzer and Valery Hughes, two pioneering women who fought for AIDS/HIV patients in the ‘80s (a fight detailed in their book Nurses on the Inside: Stories of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic In NYC). She concluded with a personal recollection of visiting Saint Vincent’s hospital in the early days of the crisis, her voice cracking as she spoke: “I remember one young man, he was in another place, he wasn’t really conscious anymore, he was near death. Yes, Madonna is in her 60s (and overcame a brush with death just last year, which forced the Celebration Tour’s kickoff to be postponed), but when she’s skipping across the stage during “Open Your Heart,” shadow boxing during “Erotica,” spitting at the fuzz during “Human Nature” or dancing high above the audience during the euphoric “Ray of Light,” she might as well be that 20-something kid who informed Dick Clark she was going to “rule the world” back in 1984 — and proceeded to do just that.

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