Chita: "once a dancer, always a dancer." after a fifty-plus-year career on broadway that took her from the chorus line to the tony for kiss of the spider woman, that's how chita rivera sees herself. and that's why she says winning this year's dance magazine award means so much to her: "it's like going back home, and your parents tell you, 'you done good, kid.'".

There's no question that Chita Rivera done good. And it's not just because she's a star. In the world of musical theater, she is an icon, revered not just for her performances but also for who she is. She exemplifies not just glamour but also grit, not just talent but also tenacity. There have been many legends on Broadway. But Rivera is in a class by herself--the patron saint of gypsies.

She goes back to the days when you auditioned for shows without a headshot. To when $250 a week seemed an incredible fortune, and you could buy your mom a fur piece with the money from your first show. But there she was in 2003, at age 70, still headlining on Broadway, still dancing a hot tango--in Nine, with Antonio Banderas--and more than holding her own onstage with a dozen women half her age.

Born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero in Washington, D.C., January 1933, Rivera, at 15, came to New York with her dance teacher to audition for the School of American Ballet. Years later, she remembers that on their way into the studio, they passed a weeping girl fleeing a class, and her teacher told her to steel herself and keep going. And that's what she did--and what she kept doing, as fate dealt her the usual run of hits and flops.

She'd hoped that after SAB she would have a ballet career. Instead, she joined the road company of Call Me Madam. Blessed with fast feet, eloquent shoulders, and a majestic neck built for tossing back that head of black curls, she went on to ensemble work in shows, including Guys and Dolls. And in 1957, she burst out of the chorus and into show business history with a featured role in West Side Story. Flipping her skirt around--watch her do it in the film version of Sweet Charity, and you can imagine her Anita--and crowing in that bristly voice about how much she liked to be in Amer-ee-ca, Rivera established herself as the go-to girl for Latin spitfires.

She's not bitter about the typecasting. "I'm really grateful for them all," she says of characters like Spanish Rose in Bye Bye Birdie. "The Anitas and the Rose Alvarezes were all positive role models. Even Aurora in Spider Woman was a Latin character. That's what's so great about this country--you want all these different cultures."

Not all the parts she took were worthy of her talents. But she kept working, through the uncelebrated musicals like Bajour; through the tours of other people's hits, like Sweet Charity; through the high spots, like Chicago with Gwen Verdon in 1975 and The Rink with Liza Minnelli in 1984. Always, she absorbed what she could from everyone she worked with. "I definitely came along in a golden age," she says. She lists the choreographers she danced for in a tone of awe: "[Jerome] Robbins, [Bob] Fosse, Gower Champion, Peter Gennaro, Michael Kidd, Jack Cole--all of the greats. And they were all so different! It makes you a much more interesting person to have all these styles put on your body. It makes you understand yourself and different kinds of music so much more."

SHE DOESN'T DWELL ON THE DOWNSIDE of things. Her instant response to a question about her regrets is another question: "How ungrateful would I have to be?" she asks. But if you push her, she will say that "it would have been an absolute dream" to dance with Baryshnikov. And it would have been great to work with Donald McKayle and Alvin Ailey. But she did get to jitterbug with Rob Marshall--and ended up with a broken finger. It was in The Rink, when he was subbing for her regular partner. "We always laugh about it," she says.

If her dancing won her fame in the wider world, in the theater she became known for her work ethic and courage. That last quality came into public view in 1986, while she was starring in Jerry's Girls with Dorothy Loudon and Leslie Uggams. Her car was rammed by a taxi on a Manhattan street, and after police cut open the roof to lift her out, she found herself in the hospital with her left leg broken in twelve places. Eleven months, two surgeries, and twelve pins later, she was dancing again. "I don't accept complaining or missing shows because you sneeze," she says in Tina Paul's book So You Want to Dance on Broadway? "You have to challenge yourself."

In 1993, at the age of 60, she took on another challenge: the title role in Kiss of the Spider Woman. As the screen goddess who haunts the imagination of a gay prisoner in a Latin American jail, she won her second Tony (The Rink had won her the first) and a rave review from Frank Rich in The New York Times. What made her performance special, he wrote, was the "aura of utter confidence that is the essence of a Broadway dancer's brassy spirit."

That spirit, Rivera says, is what keeps her going. "I wouldn't trade being a dancer for anything," she says. "It's the reason I'm still here." And for a woman who started out dreaming of the ballet, she's got a pretty diverse repertoire. "The only thing I haven't done is break dancing," she says. Uncharacteristically, she doesn't plan to fly. "I don't know how many bones I have left," she says with a laugh. "I'm gonna keep them together."

DANCE MAGAZINE's Broadway Columnist Sylviane Gold has written about theater for the Boston Phoenix, The Wall Street Journal, Newsday, The New York Times, and other publications.