Broadway Baby Paints the Town

By STEPHEN HOLDEN (Published: October 15, 2009)
When Chita Rivera dons a top hat and struts across a stage, a cane tucked under one arm, she suggests a Fellini character sprung to life. The connection hasn’t been lost on producers who have cast her in shows like “Sweet Charity” and “Nine,” adapted from Fellini movies. But Ms. Rivera, now 76, transcends any of those characters when she is simply being her ebullient, vaudevillian self, a creature dipped in sawdust and doused with glitter. She is the pied piper of razzle-dazzle challenging you to shake off your workaday blues, join the carnival parade and rejoice in life.

Ms. Rivera was at Birdland on Tuesday evening with a six-piece band to present her new album, “And Now I Swing” (Yellow Sound). The concert was a prelude to a four-night engagement (through Saturday) at the club featuring the same ensemble: Michael Croiter (on drums and guitar), Andy Ezrin (on piano), Jim Donica (on bass), Entcho Todorov (on violin), Charles Pillow (on reeds) and Jeremy Miloszewicz (on trumpet). The excitement of a Chita Rivera show has less to do with singing (her voice is harsh and ravaged) than with her vibrant physical presence. As in her recent club appearances Ms. Rivera opened on Tuesday with “I Won’t Dance,” then proceeded to move her body continuously. Maybe she wouldn’t call her little side kicks, the rotation of her shoulders, her fluttering hands and dozens of other artful maneuvers dancing, but I certainly would.

Throughout the evening she conveyed an intensely disciplined physicality in the service of a tragicomic vision that is really about camouflaging life’s darker side without denying it. Her happy clown face rarely turns into a scowl, but on the rare occasions it does, storm clouds gather. During an anecdote about visiting a Southern California church whose preacher purported to contact the spirit world, she admitted that she often thought about death. The preacher conjured the name Aurora. And in an eerie coincidence, when Ms. Rivera returned to the East Coast, she recalled, she was offered the part of the screen goddess Aurora in “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

Because Mr. Croiter, who produced Ms. Rivera’s album with Bill Sherman, is a very aggressive drummer, her signature songs were delivered with an extra kick that at times obscured her voice and the other instruments. But when Ms. Rivera connected with a song — high points included “Nowadays,” “Sweet Happy Life,” “Carousel,” “Love and Love Alone” and “All That Jazz” — it didn’t matter. What the queen of all show-business gypsies had to say to her flock was simple and primal: This is it, kids; better enjoy the party.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/arts/music/16chita.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss