Stage and screen star Chita Rivera passed away January 30 after a brief illness. She was 91. The news was confirmed by her family.
Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero, Ms. Rivera was an icon of the stage, originating the role of Anita in West Side Story as well as Velma Kelly in Chicago. A ten-time Tony nominee, she received the Best Actress in a Musical prize for her performances in Kiss of the Spider Woman and The Rink, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.
Born and raised in Washington D.C., Ms. Rivera was the daughter of Katherine (neé Anderson), a government clerk, and Pedro Julio del Rivero, a clarinetist and saxophonist, who died when Ms. Rivera was seven years old. In 1944, Ms. Rivera's mother enrolled her in the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet (now the Jones Haywood School of Dance), where she soon caught the attention of a teacher from George Balanchine's School of American Ballet.
Ms. Rivera was one of two students picked by the guest teacher to audition in New York City, where she was given a scholarship to study dance. Ms. Rivera made her Broadway debut at 20 in the original Broadway production of Guys and Dolls, following her first professional theatrical dance job on tour with Elaine Stritch in Call Me Madam. She spent much of the 1950s dancing in a variety of original musical comedies, including Can-Can, Seventh Heaven, Mr. Wonderful, and Shinbone Alley, before destiny came calling.
In 1957, Ms. Rivera originated the role of Anita in Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, and Stephen Sondheim's West Side Story. Ms. Rivera's performance as the strong-willed Puerto Rican immigrant became the blueprint for actresses to follow, including Rita Moreno, whose performance of Anita in the film adaptation of West Side Story would kick off a (mostly-joking) rivalry between the two in the media as two triple-threat Latinas in a white-dominated industry.
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