Famed Broadway performer Chita Rivera dead at 91

Chita Rivera, the dynamic dancer, singer and actor who garnered 10 Tony nominations, winning twice, in a long Broadway career that forged a path for Latina artists and rebounded after a near-fatal car accident, died Tuesday. She was 91.

Rivera’s death was announced by her daughter, Lisa Mordente, who said she died in New York after a brief illness.

Rivera first gained wide notice in 1957 as Anita in the original production of West Side Story and was still dancing on Broadway with her trademark energy a half-century later in 2015’s The Visit.

“I wouldn’t know what to do if I wasn’t moving or telling a story to you or singing a song,” she told The Associated Press then. “That’s the spirit of my life, and I’m really so lucky to be able to do what I love, even at this time in my life.”

In August 2009, Rivera was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour the United States can give a civilian. Rivera put her hand over her heart and shook her head in wonderment as U.S. President Barack Obama presented the medal. In 2013, she was the marshal at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City.

Tony success

Rivera won Tonys for best actress in a musical for The Rink in 1984 and Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1993.

She was nominated for the best actress Tony seven other times, for Bye Bye Birdie, which opened in 1960; Chicago, 1975; Bring Back Birdie, 1981; Merlin, 1983; Jerry’s Girls, 1985; Nine, 2003; and Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life, 2005.

“I don’t think we have enough original musicals,” she told The Associated Press in 2012. “I know I’m being old fashioned, but the theatre is the place where music, lyrics, words, scenery and stories come together. And I’ve been blessed enough to have done several shows when they really did. They take you places and they’re daring. That’s what we need.”

When accepting her lifetime achievement Tony Award in 2018, Rivera said, “I wouldn’t trade my life in the theatre for anything, because theatre is life.”

In the 1993 musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, Rivera played the title role, a glamorous movie star at the centre of the fantasy life of an inmate in a South American prison. The story, from a novel by Manuel Puig, had already been made into an Oscar-winning 1985 movie.

In his review, then-Associated Press drama critic Michael Kuchwara wrote that Rivera “is more than a musical theatre star. She’s a force of nature — which is exactly what is needed for the role of the Spider Woman. With her Louise Brooks haircut, brassy voice and lithe dancer’s body, Rivera dominates the stage whenever she appears.”

In 1975, she originated the role of Velma Kelly (to Gwen Verdon’s Roxie Hart) in the original Broadway production of Chicago. Rivera had a small role in the 2002 film version, while Catherine Zeta-Jones won the best supporting actress Oscar as Velma — just as Rita Moreno and Ariana DeBose picked up Oscars for their portrayals of Anita in different versions of West Side Story.

The songwriters for Chicago, John Kander and Fred Ebb, also wrote Rivera’s first Tony-winning performance, for The Rink. In winning the Tony for best actress in a musical, Rivera topped the show’s top star, Liza Minnelli, who was also nominated. The two played a mother and daughter who struggle to rebuild their relationship after a long estrangement; the setting is an old-fashioned roller rink that has seen better days.

Spider Woman had been her first Broadway show since 1986, when her leg was crushed in a traffic accident while she was appearing in Jerry’s Girls, a Broadway tribute to the songs of Jerry Herman.

At the Tony awards a few weeks later, she flashed her cast and belted out Put on a Happy Face from the musical Bye, Bye, Birdie.

It took months of physical therapy to bring back her dancing skills. She told The Associated Press: “It never entered my mind that I wouldn’t dance again. Never. I can’t explain to you why. It’s hard work getting back but that’s what I’m doing.

“My spirit is still there.”

‘I consist of two people’

Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero was born on Jan. 23, 1933, in Washington, D.C. Her Puerto Rican father, Pedro del Rivero, was a musician who played in the United States Navy Band, who died when she was seven. Her mother was of Scottish and Italian descent.

She took dance classes and then entered the prestigious School of American Ballet in New York. Her first theatre gig, at age 17, was in the touring company of Call Me Madam. That led to chorus stints in such shows as Guys and Dolls and Can-Can.

In her 2023 memoir, Chita: A Memoir, another woman steals scene after scene: her self-proclaimed alter ego, Dolores. Unapologetic and fiery, Dolores was the unfiltered version of Chita and served as motivation in times of self-doubt. In one chapter, Rivera wrote that she didn’t read reviews because “Dolores just might invest in a dozen voodoo dolls.”

“I consist of — and I think we all do — I consist of two people: Dolores and Conchita,” Rivera said in an interview with the AP that year. “Conchita, she’s the one that has been taking all the glory, you know. She’s been doing all the shows, but Dolores is the one that’s pushed her into it. And she’s been keeping me on track, so I listen to Dolores. I listen to her. She’s growing in my head now as we speak.”

Among other early appearances on the New York stage were roles in The Shoestring Revue in 1955; a musical version of Seventh Heaven in 1955 starring Ricardo Montalban; and Mr. Wonderful, a 1956 show starring Sammy Davis Jr.

“I can’t believe that I’ve been given the gift to look back and relive my life,” she told The Associated Press shortly before The Dancer’s Life opened on Broadway in late 2005.

“It’s about how anybody can do it — if you really believe it, you have the good fortune, you do all the right things and you really work hard.”