{"id":7670,"date":"2021-01-17T02:06:03","date_gmt":"2021-01-17T02:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/?p=7670"},"modified":"2025-04-21T07:16:26","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T07:16:26","slug":"jones-haywood-orbit-chita-rivera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/2021\/01\/17\/jones-haywood-orbit-chita-rivera\/","title":{"rendered":"Jones-Haywood Orbit: Chita Rivera"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Jones-Haywood School of Ballet and Chita Rivera<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Click above to see Chita Rivera\u00a0 in Jones-Haywood Orbit \u2013 The Constellation Project<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Rivera as Anita in West Side Story<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chita Rivera took ballet, voice, and piano classes as a child and became a student at the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet in 1944. Only a few years later, she was offered a scholarship to study at George Balanchine\u2019s School of American Ballet, where she studied for three years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

More about Chita Rivera<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Chita Rivera is an actress, dancer, and singer best known for her roles in musicals such as Chicago<\/em> and West Side Story<\/em>. She is a ten-time Tony Award nominee and three-time recipient. She was born in Washington DC on January 23, 1933.<\/p>\n

Her first notable acting role was with the touring company of Call Me Madam<\/em> in 1952. Her acting career blossomed from there: she performed in various productions including Guys <\/em>and Dolls<\/em>, Bye Bye Birdie<\/em>, Chicago<\/em>, and West Side Story<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Among many national tours, Rivera starred most notably in Sweet Charity<\/i> directed by Bob Fosse, playing the role of Nickie in the film adaptation of Sweet Charity<\/i> with Shirley MacLaine (1969). <\/sup>Rivera appeared three times on The Hollywood Palace<\/i>, twice on The Carol Burnett Show<\/i> (including an episode airing February 22, 1971<\/sup><\/sup>) and between 1973\u201374, played Connie Richardson on The New Dick Van Dyke Show<\/i>. <\/sup>In 1975, she earned a Tony Award nomination starring as Velma Kelly opposite Gwen Verdon in the original cast of the musical Chicago<\/i>, directed by Bob Fosse. In addition to her ballet instructors, Rivera cites Leonard Bernstein and Verdon, with whom she starred in Chicago<\/i>, as influential to her success. She later made a cameo appearance in the 2002 movie version of the show. She appeared as Fastrada in a filmed-for-television version of the musical Pippin<\/i> in 1981, and was nominated for Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Bring Back Birdie<\/i> (1981) <\/sup>and a Tony Award for Merlin<\/i> (1983) on Broadway.<\/p>\n

Rivera has earned many awards and accolades for her accomplishments. She won her first Tony Award in 1984 for her role as Anna in The Rink<\/em>. She won another Tony for her 1993 performance in Kiss of the Spider Woman<\/em>. Rivera was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 2002 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chita Rivera, Britannica<\/a>
\nHow Chita Rivera keeps dancing at 83, with 16 screws in her leg, The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

April Owens<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jones-Haywood School of Ballet and Chita Rivera Chita Rivera took ballet, voice, and piano classes as a child and became a student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"universe-template.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[256,253],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jones-haywood-constellation","category-universe"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7670"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9462,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7670\/revisions\/9462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mobballet.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}