Universally regarded as an American national treasure, Chita Rivera is Broadway's most accomplished and versatile dancer/actress/singer. A recipient of the prestigious Kennedy Center honor, presented by the President of the United States, Chita has won two Tony Awards as Best Leading Actress in a Musical and has received six additional Tony Award nominations. She is currently on Broadway in Chita Rivera: the Dancer's Life, the story of her own life in the theater, written by Terrence McNally and directed by Graciela Daniele. Her most recent Broadway previous to this was in the Tony Award winning revival of Nine, starring Antonio Banderas.

Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero in Washington, D.C., on January 23, 1933, Chita’s parents were from Puerto Rico. Her father, Pedro Julio Figueroa, played clarinet and saxophone for the Navy Band; after his death when Chita was 7, her mother, Katherine Anderson del Rivero, went to work at the Pentagon. (Chita's mother died in 1983).

Young Conchita was a tomboy. To tone down her rambunctiousness, when she was 11, her mother enrolled her in the Jones-Hayward School of Ballet, a school run by an impressive pair of black women, Doris Jones and Claire Haywood. When Conchita was 15, a teacher from George Balanchine's School of American Ballet visited their studio. She was one of two students picked to audition in New York.

At the audition, Doris Jones calmed her student with a piece of advice. "Conchita, stay in your lane." Meaning, “Don't worry about the long bodies and blond ponytails lining up next to you for the auditions; be who you are!” Chita Rivera never forgot it. Chita paid tribute to Miss Jones in her autobiographical show, Chita Rivera: the Dancer's Life.

Chita was admitted to the prestigious school on the basis of her audition and was given a scholarship. Her teachers included some of the top American dancers of the century: Edward Villella, Allegra Kent, and Maria Tallchief among them. Soon, however, the ballet world lost and Broadway gained a future star when the 17-year-old aspiring ballerina accompanied a friend to the auditions for the national tour of Call Me Madam starring Elaine Stritch. Conchita intended only to support her friend, but she ended up landing the part herself. Other roles quickly followed in such shows as Guys and Dolls, Can-Can, Seventh Heaven, and Mr. Wonderful with Sammy Davis Jr.

Then in 1957, Broadway history was made when Chita’s electric performance as Anita in the Broadway premiere of West Side Story brought her stardom. Chita's talent enabled genius, Jerome Robbins, to realize his groundbreaking choreographic vision for the production. She married Tony Mordente, a dancer from the West Side Story cast, on December 1 of that year. (The couple divorced in 1966).

Chita's performance as Anita was so central to the success of West Side Story that the London production was postoned until after she had given birth to her daughter, Lisa Mordente.

The starring role in Bye Bye Birdie followed West Side Story, and Chita returned to the West End in 1960 to reprise her performance in that role as well. Around the nation or on tour, Chita subsequently starred in Born Yesterday, The Rose Tattoo, Call Me Madam, Threepenny Opera, Sweet Charity, Kiss Me Kate, and Zorba. A national tour of Can-Can with the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes took her to Japan as well. Chita also played Nicky in the film version of Sweet Charity with Shirley MacLaine. In a wry tribute to Nicky, Chita's character for her most recent screen appearance, a cameo in the film version of Chicago, is also named "Nicky." Despite the many highlights of her stellar and historic career, Chita always maintains that her most treasured production is her daughter, singer/dancer/choreographer Lisa Mordente.

‘‘I Won’t Dance’? Just Try and Stop Her Richard Termine for The New York Times Chita Rivera performing in her cabaret show on Tuesday night. By STEPHEN HOLDEN Published: November 8, 2007 Chita Rivera has a gleam in her eye, a smirk on her lips and a bounce in her step. That description could, of course, be applied to scads of other entertainers purveying resilience and optimism. But Ms. Rivera’s brand of vivacity is qualitatively different from almost everyone else’s, because it emanates from deep within her. That gleam and that smirk are not mannerisms cultivated in a show business charm school, real or imagined. They’re expressions of an innate joie de vivre that in Ms. Rivera’s new, untitled cabaret at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency ignites a mood that can only be described as collective happiness. You leave this show walking on air. About that bounce: At the beginning of the program Ms. Rivera sings “I Won’t Dance,” emphasizing the words “Why should I?” and “How could I?” and humorously implying that she is far too old to kick up her heels. Then, almost immediately, she begins to move.

No, there are no high kicks. But as Ms. Rivera struts, shimmies, bumps, grinds, winks, rolls her eyes and, in one number, disports herself with a top hat and cane, you realize you are in the presence of a great vaudevillian whose discipline of her taut 74-year-old body is so complete that her mastery seems almost casual. Ms. Rivera’s physical and emotional vitality and her mischievous sense of fun (the gleam and the smirk suggest she has a maniacally playful side that enjoys breaking rules) dominate her material. If her voice is harsh and weathered, it is never less than expressive, most notably at Tuesday’s opening-night performance in a rendition of the evening’s show-stopping ballad, “Where Am I Going?” from “Sweet Charity.” Especially when singing songs by Cy Coleman and Kander and Ebb, the sensibilities of the performer and the songwriters fuse, and Ms. Rivera conveys a hard-boiled showbiz philosophy that might be termed tough love with a silver lining. Her band (Carmel Dean on piano, Michael Croiter on percussion and guitar, Jim Donica on bass) gives the songs a requisite kick in the pants. Late in the show Ms. Rivera takes on James Taylor’s sly, witty “Secret O’ Life” and turns it into a show business anthem in the Kander and Ebb mode. A tentatively happy reflection on living in the moment becomes a song about always showing your best face to the world (“And since we’re only here for a while/We might as well show some style”) and viewing the rough-and-tumble ride from here to eternity as a supremely funny cosmic joke. That’s called joie de vivre. ’

New York Times