Known for her dynamic personality and prodigious physical energy, Chita Rivera, who has died aged 91, created the role of Anita in West Side Story in 1957. As the heroine Maria’s friend in arguably the best musical of the 20th century, Rivera tore up the stage in the ensemble dance number America, a stunning musical expression of minority group aspiration, and sang memorable harmony lines in Tonight and I Have a Love.
Starting out as a principal dancer in New York revue, Rivera first made waves doing a calypso can-can in 1955 (alongside Gloria DeHaven and Bea Arthur) and later co-starred with Sammy Davis Jr, Dick Van Dyke, Gwen Verdon, Donald O’Connor and Liza Minnelli. She was as loved in London as she was in New York, first appearing in the capital in the West End premiere of West Side Story (1958), returning to Her Majesty’s in 1961 in Charles Strouse, Lee Adams and Michael Stewart’s Bye Bye Birdie (Marty Wilde took the role of an Elvis-style pop star drafted into the armed forces) and, sensationally, as the dream-spinning Aurora, screen idol and symbol of death, in John Kander and Fred Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Shaftesbury in 1992.
