Broadway legend Chita Rivera still kicking after all these years

By Mal Vincent
The Virginian-Pilot

You've got to admit - her career has legs.

Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero, 74, has been on the boards for 55 years. For 50 of those, she's been a star, beginning with the creation of the role of Anita in "West Side Story" and going up to tonight's Chrysler Hall opening of "Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life." The only Hispanic to win the coveted Kennedy Center Honors, she's received eight Tony Award nominations (more than any other musical performer) and won two. In addition to Anita, she created the roles of Velma in "Chicago" and Rose in "Bye Bye Birdie." It's not enough. Not nearly enough for Broadway legend Chita Rivera. She's played Nice and she's played London, but she's never, until now, played Norfolk - and, believe it or not, she's nervous.

"I'm nervous every time I go out there. We, the dancers, are athletes. You've got to make your body do something that it normally wouldn't do and only can when forced.... The joy is in the doing, and when the curtain goes up and you feel the live audience - that's when it happens. The energy comes from them."

She's doing eight shows through Sunday - and the same next week in some other town - kicking as high as ever.

"Well, almost as high," she said last week in a phone interview. "Check out the left leg. It might not be as high as the right. The left leg has 16 pins in it. It sets off metal detectors at airports."

As for splits?

Ruefully, she says: "Been there. Done that."

Still, nothing stops her.

The pins in her leg are from a car accident in 1986 in New York. Her car and a taxi cab collided, and her left leg was cracked in 12 places. Some doctors said she might never walk again, much less dance. She knew differently.

"Dancing is what I love. It's all about the spirit. If you've got it, you don't lose it - not easily."

Of her famous legs, she said: "They're working - maybe not as well as they used to, but they're working. Little darlings. When I'm in the mood, sometimes I let people feel the metal in my legs. Put them in black tights and they still look pretty good. Black tights look best."

Accompanied by five boys, four girls and an orchestra, Rivera reveals in "Dancer's Life" the highlights of a high-kicking career that she says is more a tribute to those who helped her than to herself. They include choreographers Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion, Bob Fosse and Peter Gennaro.

She also pays tribute to the late Gwen Verdon, her redheaded co-star in "Chicago."

Young Conchita grew up in Washington, D.C. Her father was Puerto Rican and played clarinet and saxophone for a Navy band. He died when she was 7. Her mother, Katherine Anderson del Rivero, worked at the Pentagon and put the 11-year-old Conchita into dance school to quiet her down.

"I was a tomboy. I was rambunctious. I was breaking up the furniture," Rivera said.

The Jones-Hayward School of Ballet in D.C. was her beginning. When Conchita was 15, a teacher from George Balanchine's School of American Ballet visited the studio - she was one of two students chosen for auditions in New York. She remembers her teacher's advice: "Conchita, stay in your lane. Create your own space." She was told not to worry about the blond ponytails and the expensive toe shoes the other girls had. Her teacher added, "You've got guts, and guts will win."

Rivera remembers the day in dance class when Balanchine himself came over and helped her bandage her leg. "I was just a baby, and my teachers included some of the greats... Edward Villela, Allegra Kent and Maria Tallchief. "

Eventually, though, a momentous choice had to be made. Rivera went with a friend to dance auditions for the Broadway show "Call Me Madam." She was offered a part.

"I wanted to be a ballerina, but I loved the freedom of the Broadway musical and I loved the fact that I could go on the stage right away - not wait. I was aware of the fact that I was under scholarship in hopes of getting into New York City Ballet and that I wouldn't be able to go back, but to tell you the truth, I would have crawled naked through broken glass to get a part."

She and her mother decided to go for it. "When they told me my name was too long for the marquee, I said, 'Change it - now.' "

Singing came almost by accident. She was at a workshop rehearsal in a bar and sang, just as a lark. The director told her to take voice lessons.

"I took about eight voice lessons in my life. It came naturally - what there was to come."

Her alto, sexy, sock-it-to- 'em vocal style made her a double threat, and made "West Side Story" possible.

"Lennie Bernstein coached me on signing 'A Boy Like That.' If I couldn't have sung that song, all the dancing would have got me only back in the chorus."

Today, she says the voice needs more guarding than the body.

"I usually have dinner at 3 a.m. I'm a nighthawk. That's one reason I always preferred the stage to the movies. Getting up at 5 a.m. for the movies is not my style - although I would have done it, if they'd given me parts. Today my morning is occupied with managing to open the hotel door and not scare anyone when I reach out to get the paper."

When she wasn't on Broadway, Rivera got together a group of "boys" and did a cabaret act. Between dance roles, she took acting jobs - never stopping - including "Born Yesterday" and Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tattoo."

She's under contract to continue "The Dancer's Life" through June, and then it's directly into preparation to take "The Visit" to Broadway.

It's a stark drama-musical in which she plays a rich woman who goes back to a town to get revenge on a man who ravaged her as a girl.

Today, she'll arrive at Chrysler Hall a few hours before curtain and start stretching, "something my body says it doesn't want to do." Then, she begins to get the energy.

"The kids come in. I get energy from them. Then it builds. It'll come. It always does."

Curtain time is 8 p.m. Chita Rivera will be ready. It's her favorite time of the day. It's razzle-dazzle time.

• Reach Mal Vincent at (757) 446-2347 or mal.vincent@pilotonline.com.