my @tags = qw/NAME LOCATION TIME DATE PRIORITY ATTENDEES DESCRIPTION/;

my @events;

open( XML, "<datafile.xml" ) or die $!;
{
   local $/ = "</EVENT>";  # input record separator is end-tag

   while (<XML>)   # read one whole <EVENT>...</EVENT> into $_
   {
      my %record = ();
      for my $t ( @tags )
      {
         if ( m{<$t>\s*([^<]+)} ) # capture text following an open tag
         {
            $record{$t} = $1;
            $record{$t} =~ s/\s+$//; # optional: remove trailing spaces
         }
      }
      push @events, { %record }; # @events is an array of hashes
   }
}
close XML;

# to get back to the data for later use:

for my $i ( 0 .. $#events ) {
    my $href = $events[$i]; # you get a reference to the hash
    my %rec_hash = %$href;  # you can make a local copy of it, or
    print "Event #", $i+1, ":\n";
    print " $_ = $$href{$_}\n" for ( keys %$href ); # just use the hash ref
}