• The way Chita works the skirt of her dress.

• Chita’s remarkable posture and physical grace. She even stands beautifully.

• The way Chita vocalizes while she is dancing, making clicks, coos, and quiet comments. “Así!”

• Chita’s irresistible smile and deeply musical laugh.

• The way Chita rests her voice by cooing in her high register from time to time.

• Chita’s generosity to the dancers who work with her. Watch how graciously she does something as simple as accepting a glass of water, for instance.

• The adoring way Chita’s dancers look at her during the curtain call.

• Chita making minor concessions to her age, as for example, when she comically elects not to do the split from Can-Can.

• The way Chita snaps into familiar moments of staging, as if by instinct. You are seeing the pure kinesthetic memory of a dancer. Watch as she confidently joins the mambo for “Dance at the Gym.” Or notice the way she chews gum in “Camille, Colette, Fifi”; then realize—there is no chewing gum. (She did something similar in the film of Chicago, surprising even herself by unconsciously rolling down one stocking as she had originally done on Broadway.)

• Chita’s unique vocal interpretations—you won’t hear her sing “find a palace where you’re the shah!” from Spider Woman, but she does give us her warbling underwater “Waah Waah!” from “Nowadays”; “I hear that Father Dip is gonna blow the blues,” from “All that Jazz”; and the scolding “One of your own kind. Stick to your own kind!” from “A Boy Like That.” Every other performance of a Chita song sounds flat by comparison.