Chita Rivera, the Broadway legend and two-time Tony Award winner, died on January 30, 2024, her daughter Lisa Mordente confirmed. Rivera, who just turned 91, died after a brief illness. Throughout her career, Rivera originated a cavalcade of iconic roles on the Broadway stage, including Anita in West Side Story and Velma Kelly in Chicago. In 2015, at the age of 82, she originated the lead role of Claire in The Visit on Broadway.
Rivera was born in 1933 to a Puerto Rican father and a Scottish, Irish, and African American mother. Growing up in Washington, D.C., she attended the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet, and at 15, she attended the American Ballet Theater in New York City. She began her Broadway career in Guys and Dolls and landed her first lead originating the role of Anita in West Side Story in 1957. She scored her first Tony Award nomination for playing Rose in Bye Bye Birdie in 1960. Her second nomination didn’t come until 1975, when she was nominated for playing Velma Kelly alongside Gwen Verdon as Roxie in the original company of Chicago. She finally won the award in 1984 for her role in The Rink, which she starred in alongside Liza Minnelli.
Two years after her first Tony Award win, Rivera was in a car crash that required 12 screws to reconnect her leg bone. “When people say, ‘Break a leg,’ I say, ‘No thank you, I’ve already done that,’†Rivera told the New York Times in 1993. “Then they laugh and I laugh, and that’s the way it should be.†She didn’t make it back to Broadway for seven years. Her first role back was Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman, for which she won her second Tony Award. In 2002, Rivera received the Kennedy Center Honors. She put on an autobiographical show in 2007 called Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life. When discussing the level of dancing she was doing in the show despite being 74, she said, “Audiences don’t want to go ouch. I remember saying to my daughter a long time ago, ‘Lisa, if you see me doing something absolutely absurd, if I lose my mind one day and have too much makeup or my skirt’s too short, please tell your mother.’†Rivera made her last trip to the Broadway stage in 2015, starring in The Visit, written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, who also wrote The Rink, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. Her eponymous memoir came out in 2023. “I’m now enjoying the fruits of my labor,†she said at the time. “I’m a dancer, a singer, and an actor. And whatever comes up, I will do.â€