Joel Grey Will Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at the Chita Rivera Awards

Legendary Broadway performer and Tony, Academy, and Golden Globe Award winner Joel Grey (Cabaret, Wicked, Anything Goes) will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2022 Chita Rivera Awards.

The Chita Rivera Awards will take place at NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts (566 LaGuardia Place, off Washington Square Park) on Monday, June 20 at 7:30pm. Lanteri produces the Chita Rivera Awards in conjunction with Patricia Watt.

It was also announced today that the Nominations Announcement has been rescheduled to May 17 due to Covid complications.

Carrying the namesake of one of the great dance icons of the American musical theater, the mission of the Chita Rivera Awards is to celebrate dance and choreographic excellence - past, present and future. The awards will honor the superb achievement of each nominee, while recognizing the immeasurable talents and passion of every theatrical choreographer and dancer. Additionally, through education and scholarships, the awards are committed to nurturing future generations, as well as preserving notable dance history.

Nominators will consider outstanding choreography, featured dancers and ensemble in shows on Broadway and Off Broadway, as well as, outstanding choreography in film, that opened pre-Covid as well as in the 2021-2022 season. Nominations for the productions under consideration this season will be determined by the designated nominating committee. There are separate nominating committees for Broadway, Off Broadway and Film. There is also an awarding committee for Broadway, which determines the final nominations that are received from the Broadway nominations committee.

Honorees of the Outstanding Contribution to Musical Theater Award, and Ambassador For The Arts Award as well as when tickets go on sale will be announced in the coming weeks.

"We are thrilled to honor Joel this year with our Lifetime Achievement Award," said Joe Lanteri. "From Cabaret and George M! to Chicago and Wicked, Joel's body of work has put him in "theater icon" status. We are proud to celebrate the man and his career."

The NYC Dance Alliance Foundation College Scholarship Program will be the beneficiary of the event. Since the inception of the NYC Dance Alliance Foundation, 4 million dollars have been awarded to over 400 dancers represented in 42 of the most prestigious college dance programs in the country.

About Joel Grey

In a career that was launched in the early 1950's, Joel Grey has created indelible stage roles each decade since. Grey made his theatrical debut at the age of 9 in On Borrowed Time at the storied American regional theatre the Cleveland Play House. He recently directed a production of the play at New Jersey's Two River Theater Company for their 20th Anniversary Season. He made his Broadway debut exactly two decades later in Neil Simon's first comedy hit, Come Blow Your Horn (1961). Since then, his Broadway credits include the Stop the World I Want to Get Off, Half a Sixpence, Cabaret (Tony Award), George M! (Tony nomination), Goodtime Charley (Tony nomination), The Grand Tour (Tony nomination), Chicago (Drama Desk Award), Wicked, Anything Goes, and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Joel's dramatic stage roles include Marco Polo Sings a Solo, Give Me Your Answer, Do! (Drama Desk nomination), New York City Opera's Silverlake (directed by Hal Prince) and Larry Kramer's seminal The Normal Heart at The Public Theatre, which he also subsequently co-directed with George C. Wolfe in its Tony Award winning Broadway premiere (Drama Desk Award, Tony nomination). Joel received the Academy Award, the Golden Globe and the British Academy Award for his performance in the 1972 film version of Cabaret (directed by Bob Fosse). He is one of only nine actors to have won both the Tony and Academy Award for the same role. Other film credits include Man on A Swing, Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, The Seven Percent Solution, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, Steven Soderbergh's Kafka, Altman's The Player, The Music of Chance, Michael Ritchie's adaptation of The Fantasticks, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark and Clark Gregg's Choke. Notable television appearances include "Brooklyn Bridge" (Emmy nomination), "OZ," "Law and Order: CI," "House," "Brothers & Sisters," "Private Practice," "Grey's Anatomy," "Nurse Jackie," "Warehouse 13," and "CSI." In 2010, Joel was honored for his illustrious television career by The Paley Center for Media in both NYC and Los Angeles. Joel is also an accomplished photographer. He has five books of photographs, Pictures I Had to Take (2003), Looking Hard at Unexamined Things (2006), 1.3 - Images From My Phone (2009), and The Billboard Papers (2013) and The Flower Whisperer. His work is part of the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. His memoir, Master of Ceremonies, was published in February 2016 (Flatiron). Joel most recently directed the acclaimed production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish which won the 2019 Drama Desk Award for Best Musical Revival, the 2019 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical Revival, and a 2019 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award Special Citation. Joel is the father of Jennifer and James and the grandfather of Stella.