![]() ![]() “I would have had to be just like everybody else. She successfully auditioned for George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet but, after a couple of years, broke from the corps of ballerinas. There’s nothing better than a good laugh.” At school she was a class clown: “I was sneaky – I would do anything for a laugh.” Comedy is part of what drew her to musical theatre. ![]() ![]() “You learn how to defend yourself when you’re one of five, you know? You want to survive – and survive joyfully. Rivera’s childhood was clouded by the death of her father when she was seven, but it was full, too, of mischief with her siblings. When she crashed through the table, aged nine, her exasperated mother decided ballet would be a way to burn some energy and learn a little discipline. As a child, Rivera would bounce off the walls of the family’s Washington DC home. To explain: Broadway has a broken piece of bamboo furniture to thank for the glittering career of one of its greatest “triple-threat” entertainers (one who excels at singing, acting and dancing). But then I went and fell through the coffee table and my mother put me in ballet school.” Most young Catholic girls have that feeling. “I was quite comfortable looking forward to being a nun. “I was brought up in a very Catholic household,” she says. In Chita: A Memoir, Rivera reveals that the holy theatre of Sunday mass almost led her to become a nun instead. ‘The merry murderess’ … with Gwen Verdon in Chicago. ![]()
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