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Chita Rivera marked a before and after when it comes to Latinos in the arts. Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero Anderson in 1933, the American born and Puerto Rican artist remains one of Broadway’s most celebrated performers, originating various roles in plays like West Side Story, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman.
Born in Washington D.C., Rivera began her career in the arts young, as a ballet dancer. When she was 15 years old, Rivera impressed her instructors so much that she was granted a scholarship in the School of American Ballet in New York City. The rest is history. Rivera began to star in small Broadway roles until she had her breakthrough, playing Anita in West Side Story. The role landed her a Tony Award nomination and opened doors that hadn’t previously existed.
My mother put me in ballet school because I’d been jumping on our coffee table and broke it. She wanted to channel my energy, and that put me on the right track. I learned devotion. I learned passion. I learned how to take criticism,” she said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review.
Over the course of her career, Rivera has been nominated for 10 Tony awards and has won it two times, for the shows The Rink and Kiss of the Spider Woman. She is also the first Latina and Latin American to receive a Kennedy Center Honor and to be bestowed with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2018, she won the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement.
In recent years, she’s made appearances as a speaker in various events and has been featured in TV and films, including Lin Manuel Miranda’s film Tick, Tick... Boom! This year, Rivera published her first book, Chita: A Memoir, adding another achievement to her incredibly succesful career.