Chita Rivera at 80: 'Still living my life'

• Benefit %27Chita%3A A Legendary Celebration%27 will be staged on Broadway Monday
• Rivera launches another tour in Janurary%2C and will perform throughout 2013
• %22I was pretty lucky to have come around at a great time%2C%22 show-biz legend says

NEW YORK — At 80 years old, Chita Rivera still has the lissome frame and impeccable posture of a working dancer. But don't tell her that.

"Ugh, I'm about 10 pounds overweight, and it feels like 50," Rivera insists, waving her hand. The onetime aspiring ballerina-turned-musical theater legend admits that she no longer practices her craft daily.

"I'm coming to a time in my life where I don't deserve to have to sweat in class every day," Rivera says, during a conversation at the Times Square offices of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. "After so many years, I kind of feel like I deserve a hot fudge sundae. But I still want to be in shape, and to do my show, which takes energy."

Indeed, Rivera has pretty much never stopped working, touring extensively when she's not appearing on Broadway — most recently in an acclaimed 2012 revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood — or introducing a new project such as The Visit, a musical crafted by three of her many famous champions, playwright Terrence McNally and the team of composer John Kander and late lyricist Fred Ebb; Rivera has starred in two major regional productions since 2001 and staged a concert in 2011.

Rivera's own story as a prolific song-and-dance woman will take center stage Monday, when Chita: A Legendary Celebration arrives at Broadway's August Wilson Theatre. She describes the one-night only event, a benefit for BC/EFA, as "pretty much" like her touring show, "though there will be some surprises, a few friends popping in" — among them fellow veteran troupers Ben Vereen and Tommy Tune.

The evening will include songs from two Kander and Ebb favorites she's closely associated with, Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman — the latter won Rivera her second Tony Award in 1993; her first, in 1984, was for another Kander and Ebb show, The Rink — in addition to earlier triumphs such as West Side Story and Bye Bye Birdie.

Kiss and Link librettist McNally "wrote some stuff for me to use" as banter, "but he told me, 'Chita, use it if you'd like, or don't — I want the words to come freely and easily from you."

Rivera is similarly generous in discussing the creative giants she has worked with during a professional career that dates back to 1952, when as a teenager she was choreographed by Jerome Robbins in a national tour of Call Me Madam. "I was pretty lucky to have come around at a great time, and to fit into some shoes that had already been made."

Rivera admits that she doesn't see many new productions — though she did step out to catch Kinky Boots on Broadway recently. "I should see more, but I guess I'm more of a doer than a looker. When I'm home, I like to be home."

Home is now upstate New York, where Rivera lives with her daughter, Lisa Mordente — also a dancer and singer, and choreographer — and Mordente's two dogs. "And there are feral cats to feed," Rivera notes. "They just showed up, and they're beautiful."

Mordente will presumably see to it that the critters are nourished when Rivera launches yet another trek in 2014. Beginning in LaCrosse, WI on Jan. 22, she'll play several shows a month throughout the year. After that, Rivera may consider revisiting The Visit: "It's such a great piece of theater; I'd really love to see it get done."

The work is "what this machine was meant to do," Rivera insists. "It's what I'm built for. I'm still living my life."