Famed Broadway performer Chita Rivera dead at 91

Chita Rivera, the dynamic dancer, singer and actor who garnered 10 Tony nominations, winning twice, in a long Broadway career that forged a path for Latina artists and rebounded after a near-fatal car accident, died Tuesday. She was 91.

Rivera's death was announced by her daughter, Lisa Mordente, who said she died in New York after a brief illness.

Rivera first gained wide notice in 1957 as Anita in the original production of West Side Story and was still dancing on Broadway with her trademark energy a half-century later in 2015's The Visit.

"I wouldn't know what to do if I wasn't moving or telling a story to you or singing a song," she told The Associated Press then. "That's the spirit of my life, and I'm really so lucky to be able to do what I love, even at this time in my life."

In August 2009, Rivera was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honour the United States can give a civilian. Rivera put her hand over her heart and shook her head in wonderment as U.S. President Barack Obama presented the medal. In 2013, she was the marshal at the Puerto Rican Day Parade in New York City.

Rivera won Tonys for best actress in a musical for The Rink in 1984 and Kiss of the Spider Woman in 1993.

She was nominated for the best actress Tony seven other times, for Bye Bye Birdie, which opened in 1960; Chicago, 1975; Bring Back Birdie, 1981; Merlin, 1983; Jerry's Girls, 1985; Nine, 2003; and Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life, 2005.

"I don't think we have enough original musicals," she told The Associated Press in 2012. "I know I'm being old fashioned, but the theatre is the place where music, lyrics, words, scenery and stories come together. And I've been blessed enough to have done several shows when they really did. They take you places and they're daring. That's what we need."

When accepting her lifetime achievement Tony Award in 2018, Rivera said, "I wouldn't trade my life in the theatre for anything, because theatre is life."

In the 1993 musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, Rivera played the title role, a glamorous movie star at the centre of the fantasy life of an inmate in a South American prison. The story, from a novel by Manuel Puig, had already been made into an Oscar-winning 1985 movie.

In his review, then-Associated Press drama critic Michael Kuchwara wrote that Rivera "is more than a musical theatre star. She's a force of nature — which is exactly what is needed for the role of the Spider Woman. With her Louise Brooks haircut, brassy voice and lithe dancer's body, Rivera dominates the stage whenever she appears."

In 1975, she originated the role of Velma Kelly (to Gwen Verdon's Roxie Hart) in the original Broadway production of Chicago. Rivera had a small role in the 2002 film version, while Catherine Zeta-Jones won the best supporting actress Oscar as Velma — just as Rita Moreno and Ariana DeBose picked up Oscars for their portrayals of Anita in different versions of West Side Story.

The songwriters for Chicago, John Kander and Fred Ebb, also wrote Rivera's first Tony-winning performance, for The Rink. In winning the Tony for best actress in a musical, Rivera topped the show's top star, Liza Minnelli, who was also nominated. The two played a mother and daughter who struggle to rebuild their relationship after a long estrangement; the setting is an old-fashioned roller rink that has seen better days.

Spider Woman had been her first Broadway show since 1986, when her leg was crushed in a traffic accident while she was appearing in Jerry's Girls, a Broadway tribute to the songs of Jerry Herman.