The great Chita Rivera changed Broadway forever

When the news broke Tuesday of Broadway legend Chita Rivera’s death at age 91, the song “Somewhere” started playing in my head.

A beautiful tearjerker from “West Side Story” often used during “In Memoriam” segments is about the young Sharks and Jets eventually finding peace. “There’s a place for us,” it goes.

But then it hit me like a Jet during the rumble: “Somewhere” is the wrong number to encapsulate the dynamo of life, dance, voice, looks, and sheer force of personality that was the indomitable Rivera.

Far better suited is her proud lyric as Anita, the role she originated in “West Side” that made her a superstar in 1957, during the vivacious “America”: “I like the island Manhattan! Smoke on your pipe and put that in!”

We liked her, too. Playing some of Broadway’s most iconic parts over a decades-long career, she helped make New York City and the American musical theater the cultural forces they are today.

Or there’s the tune she sang as sharp-tongued prisoner Velma Kelly, another unforgettable role, in “Chicago” in 1975: “It’s good. Isn’t it great? Isn’t it grand? Isn’t it swell?”

Rivera was good, great, grand, and swell. She was a scintillating dancer for whom choreography was not simply learned and repeated, but fully embodied with such knock-down-drag-out confidence you’d swear she was improvising it.

How about her sexy ditty “Gimme Love” as Aurora in 1992’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman”? “If there’s an earthquake, I will not attend,” she crooned. “If there’s a plague, don’t invite me, my friend. But if you want to keep me looking in your direction, let’s make love!”

Always sensual and vibrant, Rivera was as age-defiant a performer as there could possibly be.

When the actress helped celebrate Broadway in Times Square in the summer of 2021 while the theaters were shut down, she abundantly made that clear.

“I began my career in the theater over 70 years ago,” Rivera, then 88, told the crowd. “And I know what you’re all thinking: I don’t look a day over 60!”

She didn’t.

Yes, “Somewhere” is not the right song to sum up Chita.

But this whoopee-hotcha classic is perfect: “Come on babe, we’re gonna brush the sky. I betcha Lucky Lindy never flew so high.”

Lucky us, we got to experience Chita Rivera. She really was all that jazz.