New York ? During the Kennedy Center Honors three years ago, one recipient was feeling a little self-conscious.

There to be feted at the Washington black-tie affair were actors Elizabeth Taylor and James Earl Jones, singer Paul Simon, conductor James Levine and dancer Chita Rivera.

It was Rivera who was feeling out of place, unsure how she fit in – that is, until a huge burst of animal energy emerged from the wings. Rivera, seated high in a box beside the president and first lady, looked down as about 30 or 40 dancers prepared to dance for her.

“I suddenly go, ‘Oh my God. This is why I’m here!'” Rivera recalls. “‘I’m here to represent all those guys down there, every dancer who’s ever been on Broadway or ever will be on Broadway.’ And it felt right then – I felt that it was OK for me to be there.”

That realization also turned out to be the hook Rivera had been struggling to find as she looked for a way to encapsulate her 50-plus years as a dancer. A tell-all autobiography didn’t appeal to her, but a show did – a show for all dancers.

Hence the Broadway debut of “Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life,” a musical that opens Sunday and celebrates her life and Tony Award-winning career, featuring a cast of 11 and written by Terrence McNally.

“I can’t believe that I’ve been given the gift to look back and relive my life,” says Rivera, 72. “It’s about how anybody can do it – if you really believe it, you have the good fortune, you do all the right things and you really work hard.”

The musical revisits some of Rivera’s greatest hits as she rose from chorus girl to star, collaborating along the way with many of Broadway’s greatest talents, including Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, Michael Kidd, Harold Prince, Jack Cole and Kander & Ebb.

“I’m honoring my family, and I’m honoring my teachers,” she says. “I hear a lot of kids saying, ‘Who’s Jack Cole?’ Well, I’ve got to tell them so that they know who he is and they can be better.”

It would behoove the kids to listen carefully. Rivera originated some of theater’s most memorable roles, including Anita in 1957’s “West Side Story,” Rose in 1960’s “Bye Bye Birdie,” Velma in 1975’s “Chicago” and the title role in 1993’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

Perseverance her trademark

Her work ethic and stamina continue to amaze. This is a woman, after all, who clambered back on stage to dance in 1988 after being in an almost fatal car accident two years earlier that crushed her right leg and required 12 screws to fix.

“She can’t rehearse except for full-out,” McNally says. “She can’t perform except for full-out, no matter what the size of the house. She’s going to be there 101 percent for that audience.”

Asked where that dedication comes from, Rivera betrays a tiny flutter of insecurity: “I’ve always said in my next life I’ll come back as a golden carriage – this time I’m the horse pulling it.”

About the musical

The musical is directed and choreographed by fellow “Chicago” cast member Graciela Daniele and has a few new songs by “Ragtime” composers Steven Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens. It made its premiere Sept. 22 at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego.

For McNally, the show offers a new generation of Broadway-goers the privilege of seeing the dances made famous by Rivera performed by the very body for which they were created.

“The point of the show is not whether Chita kicks her leg as high as she did 40 years ago – of course she doesn’t. It’s the purity of the line and what those steps are all about,” he says.

Rivera was born the middle child of five in Washington to a Puerto Rican-born father and an American mother. At 16, she earned a scholarship to George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet and, a year later, while accompanying a nervous classmate for a chorus-girl audition in front of Robbins, landed one of the principal roles in the national tour of “Call Me Madam.”

“I had more guts than I thought I had,” she says with a smile.