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There is no one quite like Chita Rivera. She has deservedly earned her status with limitless talent, incredible endurance, a bit of luck in the gene pool, long and gorgeous gams, lots of pizzazz, and that certain something that has made her an audience favorite for five decades. She has been called the ultimate crossover performer, as an actress, singer, and above all, dancer. From West Side Story to Kiss of the Spider Woman, from Can-Can to Bye Bye Birdie to The Rink, she has been the inspiration for theater’s most electrifying creators, including Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, John Kander and Fred Ebb. “My body is the sum total of all the choreographers who have trained me,” Rivera has said, but she adds up to much more. She once led a crowd of 50,000 dancing the Macarena at Yankee Stadium, and she has spent more than half a century entertaining millions. The New York Times has called her “the most exciting night club performer in the business,” but it is as a “Broadway baby” that the world loves her best. Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero was born in 1933 in Washington, DC. Her Puerto Rican father Pedro del Rivero played the clarinet and saxophone for the United States Navy Band. After his death in 1940, his widow Katherine del Rivero went to work as a government clerk at the Pentagon and continued to nurture the talents of the couple’s five children. She enrolled her tomboy daughter Chita in ballet school, and the rambunctious little girl found herself in her element at once. In 1949, Rivera won a scholarship to George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, where the talented youngster was drenched in the brilliance and technique that nourish her heart to this day. The ballet world lost her within three years, however, when the call of Broadway came. On a lark, Rivera tagged along with a friend to an audition for Call Me Madam. She was hired on the spot as a principal dancer, and her life would never be quite the same. She toured the nation with Call Me Madam, returned to New York as a principal dancer in Guys and Dolls, then joined the original Broadway company of Cole Porter’s Can-Can. Off-Broadway, Chita joined Ben Bagley’s now legendary Shoestring Review opposite Bea Arthur and Arte Johnson. Peter Gennaro’s Seventh Heaven followed, as did Mr. Wonderful opposite Sammy Davis, Jr. But all of these were leading up to the landmark that lay ahead. That came in 1957, and its name was West Side Story. Rivera created the role of Anita in the Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins masterpiece, embodying the boldest and most distinctive elements of the show in a tour de force of acting, singing, and dancing that defined the American musical’s new age. It was in the New York run of West Side Story that Rivera met her husband Tony Mordente, and it was the birth of their daughter Lisa that delayed the London premiere of the show: West Side Story, the creators agreed, could not premiere in Great Britain without Chita Rivera. The wait was rewarded, and Rivera triumphed in the West End. Returning home after the London run, Rivera starred opposite Dick Van Dyke in Bye Bye Birdie, which she also took to London. She ventured into Kurt Weill territory with an American tour of The Threepenny Opera; she crossed the country again in Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity. She was cast as Nicky in the film version of Sweet Charity opposite Shirley McClain, and it was while filming in Los Angeles that Rivera decided sunny California would be the best place to raise her daughter. She did not stand still for long: the parade of her multi-faceted credits grew to include Born Yesterday, The Rose Tattoo, Zorba (with John Raitt), Kiss Me Kate, Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris and Father’s Day. Then Broadway called again. Fosse, Kander and Ebb persuaded Rivera to return to Broadway and cast her as Velma Kelly opposite Gwen Verdon’s Roxie in the musical Chicago. A temporary delay in that show’s opening led to Rivera’s first night club act and the discovery of a whole new universe of entertainment for the singer/dancer/actor. Chicago, of course, opened and made Broadway history. It was during the run of Chicago that Rivera first starred opposite Liza Minnelli, who substituted for the ailing Gwen Verdon during the run. Rivera and Minnelli then went on to share the spotlight as mother and daughter in The Rink. This Kander and Ebb musical won Rivera the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical as well as the Drama Desk Award. Rivera spent much of the 90s as the elusive icon in Kiss of the Spider Woman, earning some of the highest critical and popular praise of her extraordinary career on both sides of the Atlantic and her second Tony Award. Her secret for keeping this part fresh year after year, as well as for making so many roles live for theater lovers everywhere is disarmingly simple: “I just make sure I’m in the moment,” Rivera has said. “I’m enjoying everybody. I’m really that kind of person. And this is a wonderful thing, to be able to entertain people.” At age 74 and still a cabaret razzle-dazzler from time to time (not to mention leading lady and lead dancer in her current tour), Rivera received her ninth Tony nomination in 2006 for CHITA RIVERA: THE DANCER’S LIFE. This Broadway treasure shows no signs of stopping. Chita Rivera Trivia
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