Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero Anderson

Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero was born in Washington, D.C., to a Puerto Rican father and a mother of Scottish and Italian descent. At age fifteen, she won a scholarship to George Balanchine's School of American Ballet in New York City, developing an explosive athletic dynamism that revolutionized musical theater dance.

In 1957, Rivera made Broadway history when Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Stephen Sondheim cast her as Anita in the original production of West Side Story, setting Broadway ablaze with her high-kicking performance of "America." In 1975, Bob Fosse cast her as murderer Velma Kelly in the original production of Kander & Ebb's Chicago opposite Gwen Verdon. Over a peerless six-decade career, Rivera received ten Tony nominations, winning Tony Awards for The Rink (1984) and Kiss of the Spider Woman (1993), as well as a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2018. In 2009, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the first Hispanic woman to receive America's highest civilian honor.