Chita Rivera Awards: 2025 Nominations for Film and Broadway

by Nathaniel R

We've mentioned the low-profile Chita Rivera Awards a few times here at The Film Experience. The awards, named after the legendary Broadway performer of West Side Story, The Rink, Chicago, and Sweet Charity fame are a fun idea, honoring dance in both feature films and on Broadway (the more common place for dance to be honored). Since we love all three art forms and the namesake we are all for this! The 2025 honors will be their 7th installment.

This year's ceremony will be held in NYC on May 19 with the amazing Tony & Emmy winner Bebe Neuwirth (Chicago, Cheers) as host. The most famous nominee this year is surely Jonathan Groff. While we've had an enormous crush on him for years, we swear that it's his abundant talent and not his beauty that have kept the fires burning. Plus mad respect for the surely difficult but highly welcome balancing act he's been doing mixing feature films, tv shows, and Broadway shows fairly consistently for years. Groff is involved in both the stage and film categories this year. Read on for the nominations and a few comments...

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A Memorial for "In Memorium"

One last piece on an individual moment from Oscar night?

by Baby Clyde

They couldn’t have started off the In Memoriam segment of the 96th Annual Academy Awards, in a more sober fashion. Recently assassinated Russian opposition leader and subject of last year's Best Documentary winner Alexei Navalny appears on screen, speaking directly to the audience. It’s a bold, surprising opener, somewhat at odds with the slick, professional and ever so slightly dull show that made up the rest of the runtime. This grim reminder of a world outside the Hollywood bubble gives absolutely no indication of the calamitous 4 minutes we're about to endure...

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Books @ the Movies: Chita Rivera on "West Side Story"

by Nathaniel R

Memoir alert! For those of you who love showbiz biographies, take note that "Chita: A Memoir" is now on sale. The legendary dancer and multiple Tony winner Chita Rivera, turned 90 earlier this year. She was spurred to write the memoir (with the help of Patrick Pacheco) during the pandemic when there was so much down time.

Rivera and Pacheco are smart and know to drop the goods immediately; The very first chapter is on how she landed the legend-making role of "Anita" in Broadway's original incarnation of West Side Story... aka the greatest musical ever written. "Anita" is one of those roles. If you deliver, your career will never be the same again (just ask Rita Moreno and Ariana DeBose) but it all started with Chita.

Having just started the book, we can't speak to how often the memoir will return to the iconic musical but we wanted to share a couple of tidbits...

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2022 Chita Rivera Winners

We told you back in May that the Chita Rivera Awards, which hadn't been held since 2019, would be back for 2022. The nominations were a mix of both the 2020 and 2022 Broadway seasons as well as the 2021 film year. In short, COVID-19 really did a number on all awards shows, no matter how niche! After the jump the winners (and nominees) of this prize honoring dancers and choreographers in movies and on stage.

OUTSTANDING CHOREOGRAPHY FOR A THEATRICAL RELEASE

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West Side Story... is forever.

by Nathaniel R

Rita Moreno, still sensational at 88 years young.It occurred to us last week while looking at photos from Steven Spielberg's 2020 remake of West Side Story that a huge swath of the original cast members from the 1961 Best Picture winner are still with us today. It's not just the legendary trailblazer Rita Moreno though she's the liveliest of the bunch despite being the oldest at a spritely 88. 

So after the jump all the surviving cast members!

We honor their contributions to an indelible piece of film history even though there are a great many of them that didn't say in movies thereafter. Anyway, thiis is us doing our small part to suggest and hope that they get a bit of attention when the new iteration of the greatest musical ever written arrives. Invite them to the December premiere at least, Spielberg, won'tcha?

Here they are...

Character names in white = the actor is still with us today

THE JETS

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