Given the adjectives used to describe Chita Rivera on stage (“volcanic”, “flammable”, “electric”, “explosive”, “gravity defying”, “exhilarating”, “spitfire”) you’d be forgiven for wondering if the critics were referring to the legendary Broadway star or a natural disaster.
Rivera, a rare triple-threat (a performer skilled at singing, dancing and acting), has died aged 91, leaving behind one of the most celebrated — and enduring — careers in Broadway history.
She originated iconic roles such as Anita in West Side Story, Velma Kelly in Chicago and Rose Alvarez in Bye Bye Birdie. Known as Broadway’s “Queen of the Gypsies”, referring to the term for hard-working chorus members who move from show to show, she was also a name-above-the-title magnetic star.
Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero was born in Washington in 1933, the middle child in a family of five. Her mother enrolled her in ballet class when the young Rivera, boisterous and prone to leaping around the house, misplaced a jump and smashed the coffee table.
This furniture-preserving manoeuvre would lead to a scholarship at the prestigious School of American Ballet in New York. Studying under the great George Balanchine, Rivera internalised his philosophy, which would come to define her no-holds-barred style: “What are you saving it for?”
A classically trained dancer, Rivera says she initially condescended to musical theatre. “I was a perfect little snob,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times in 1988. She landed her first role in 1952 by accident, accompanying a nervous friend to her audition. In the end, theatre was her natural home. She could never keep from smiling while she danced, anyway, she said.
She was cast in show after show, and shortened her stage name to Chita Rivera. But it was her indelible turn in West Side Story in 1957, which ran for 732 performances, that made her a star.
Though she was one of the most original dance stylists of all time, with a voice that naturally slid between dialogue and song, Rivera was largely self-taught. She learnt on the job, working with revered choreographers, lyricists and composers such as Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins.
Rivera won two Tony awards for best actress in a musical despite never taking an acting lesson. She told The New York Times in 1960 that her ability came from ballet. “Dancing is primarily acting — you must tell a complete, understandable story without words.”
Though she was a headline attraction, she remained a chorus member at heart. “Despite the preponderance of evidence, Chita does not think she’s a star,” Fred Ebb, the lyricist for Kiss of the Spider Woman, which Rivera starred in, told The Washington Post in 1995. “She thinks she’s Chita, one of the gang, a member of the team, part of the chorus. There’s nothing self-aggrandising or pompous about her. What you see is what you get.”
In 1984, Rivera won her first Tony award, and joked to the crowd that after years of nominations and no trophy, “I’m very happy that I bought the bottom of the dress this year.”
A car accident in 1986 nearly derailed her career. The New York Times reported on plans to keep her show running without its star: “When Chita Rivera breaks her leg, it takes seven chorus girls to replace her.” But she would return to dancing, starring in another show by 1993.
A Puerto Rican-American, Rivera was a pioneer for diversity in the industry. Auditions in the 1950s were full of tall, blonde dancers “and there I was, short, brunette, dressed in a black skirt and tights, and with a nose like a chicken’s ass”, she wrote in her memoir, published last year. After five decades on stage, she became the first Latina to be awarded Kennedy Center Honors, in 2002. In 2018, she received a Tony award for lifetime achievement.
Rivera’s life-long camaraderie with her castmates also made her a formidable fundraiser and advocate for Aids research and charities from the early 1980s.
In 2015, at the age of 82, she said that she had no plans to retire, though she had removed flying splits and backflips from her choreography years earlier.
The star is survived by her daughter, the actress Lisa Mordente, who remembers her mother choreographing her middle school musicals.
Rivera’s longevity made her a Broadway elder, but she was frustrated with being defined by age. She told The Washington Post in 1995, “I don’t want people to say, ‘Isn’t it amazing she’s doing all that in her sixties!’ I want them to look at the work and say, ‘Isn’t it good!’”
“I mean, I’m still wearing leather,” she said.
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