![]() ![]() She recalls Leonard Bernstein teaching her the score himself: "I remember sitting next to Lenny and his starting with 'A Boy Like That,' teaching it to me and me saying, 'I'll never do this, I can't hit those notes, I don't know how to hit those notes.' "īut she did hit them, and being able to sing, act and dance made her a valuable Broadway commodity, said Maslon. West Side Story allowed Rivera to reveal not only her athletic dancing chops, but her acting and singing chops. And, being Latin, you know, it was a welcoming sound." "Hearing 'America' was just mind-boggling, with that rhythm," Rivera told NPR in 2007 for the musical's 50th anniversary. In 1957, she landed her breakout role, Anita in West Side Story, with a score by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. But when she went with a friend to an audition for the tour of the Broadway show Call Me Madam, Rivera got the job. ![]() Rivera took to ballet so completely that she got a full scholarship to the School of American Ballet in New York. Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero in Washington, D.C., she told an audience at a Screen Actors Guild Foundation interview that she was a tomboy and drove her mother crazy: "She said, 'I'm putting you in ballet class so that we can rein in some of that energy.' So I am very grateful." You might think Chita Rivera was a Broadway baby from childhood - but she wasn't. "She was spontaneous and compelling and talented as hell for decades and decades on Broadway. Rivera "was everything Broadway was meant to be," says Laurence Maslon, co-producer of the 2004 PBS series Broadway: The American Musical. The three-time Tony Award-winning Broadway legend created indelible roles - Anita in West Side Story, Rose in Bye Bye Birdie, Velma Kelly in Chicago, and Aurora in Kiss of the Spiderwoman. Chita Rivera, who appeared in more than 20 Broadway musicals over six decades, has died, according to her daughter, Lisa Mordente.
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