Chita Rivera at Café Carlyle

There's no dame like Chita Rivera, the two-time Tony Award winning octogenarian who has thrilled audiences on Broadway for over six decades. At 83, Rivera has managed to preserve the vivacious amalgamation of fiery �lan and gutsy, triple-threat ferocity that colors the starring roles that made her an icon of the theatrical stage.

Making her debut at Caf� Carlyle some 11 years in the wake of her 2005 Broadway retrospective, "The Dancer's Life," the song-and-dance prima donna is still at it, shimmying to Latin rhythms, pelvic thrusting to sultry vamps and logging hours towards her opulent legacy of razzle-dazzle in the business of show. It was this ability to toggle on the tightrope between Jerome Robbins's Olympic-level ballet acrobatics and Bob Fosse's sensuous down-and-dirty innuendo-laden jazz dance routines that made her a celebrated stage diva.

Her set at the Carlyle, "An Evening of My Favorite Songs," operates as a musical memoir of her past triumphs as accompanied by big band connoisseurs that feature music director Michael Croiter on guitar, Michael Patrick Walker, associate music director on piano, Jim Donica on bass and Dan Willis on reeds.

Known to audiences for originating the role of vaudevillian murderess Velma Kelly in the 1975 production of "Chicago" on Broadway, Rivera made due with performing ditties from the classic Prohibition-era musical satire. Plumbing her martini-marinated, quavering, brassy pipes to dynamic effect, the actress-singer-dancer belted out "All That Jazz" with insatiable brusque and gave a rather comedic take on the show's finale "Nowadays," imitating co-star Gwen Verdon's distinctive grainy, guttural and girlish vocals.

She also gave salutes to the shows and roles that she was critically praised for: the long-suffering secretary Rose "Rosie" Alvarez in Charles Strouse's "Bye Bye Birdie" (she cha-chas through the showstopper "A Lot of Livin' to Do"); the life-worn Anna in the Kander & Ebb passion project "The Rink" (singing "Chief Cook and Bottle Washer"); and the red-bloodied Anita in Arthur Laurents' "West Side Story" (singing a medley).

Each one had touches of that mercurial madness she brings to each role. Sadly, for fans of Kander & Ebb's definitive "Kiss of the Spider Woman," Rivera opted for less escapism and chose to update her repertoire with the lesser known but poignant "Love and Love Alone" from the songwriting duo's "The Visit," which the entertainer headlined on Broadway in 2015.

Throughout her illustrious career, the Broadway icon has been honored with eight additional nominations from the coveted top theatre prize and made history when she became the first Hispanic woman and the first Latino American to receive a Kennedy Center Honors award in 2002. Along with being gifted with virtually every acting trophy in the performance arts, Rivera was also presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House by Barack Obama in 2009. Yet, Rivera, a hopeless romantic of sorts, remembers the men who came into her life.

She reminisces on the time she executed one of her legendary high kicks, throwing her leg onto Antonio Banderas' shoulder in the 2002 Broadway revival of "Nine," batting her lashes to the legions of the actor's fans and telling them to "Eat your heart out." She recalls tearing up when maestro Leonard Bernstein plucked out the first notes to "America" and added drama to the keys that colored "A Boy Like That."

She remembers being tapped by Bob Fosse to star opposite screen icon Shirley MacLaine in the screen adaptation of Cy Coleman's "Sweet Charity," and how she came to develop an expertise of her body through "the rhythm of life." She recollects burning up the dance floor with Dick Van Dyke in "Bye Bye Birdie" and in a tender moment, she remembers starring opposite Roger Rees in "The Visit," in his last performance, before crooning the heartwarming "Winter."

Dedicating Carol Hall's "Circle of Friends" to close friend and music icon Bobby Short, whom she witnessed work a strange magic during his tenure at the Caf� Carlyle, a mystifying realization hit the audience, that she was a survivor looking back; one who has witnessed legends come and go, many of them being her greatest champions.

Oddly enough, one of the most mesmerizing moments of the night included Rivera reciting a rendition of "Carousel" from "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," the musical revue she toured nationally in 1970. In the merry-go-round music hall inspired anthem, Rivera conveys the lyrics with a nuance and dizzying swiftness that seizes the essence of a nightmarish carnival landscape and the unnerving synthesis of impending jeopardy, geriatric confusion and rampant cacophony with childlike enchantment.

But the most revealing and the most naked that this star (and ultimately the audience) gets was the disarming portrait of life's anonymities as executed in "Where Am I Going?" from Coleman and Dorothy Fields' "Sweet Charity." Here was a creature of show business, this world-renowned performer with greasepaint in her veins, fighting for one last moment to stand over the footlights, giving her all for one moment of applause, asking truly existential questions about the human condition. Unless you're born without a range of emotions, the only thing witnesses are permitted to feel is indebted to her for allowing us into the avalanche of apprehension, anxiety, angst and ecstasy.

Chita Rivera plays through May 21 at Cafe Carlyle, 35 E. 76th St. in New York. For information or tickets on upcoming shows, call 212-744-1600 or visit http://www.rosewoodhotels.com/en/the-carlyle-new-york/dining/cafe-carlyle