When Diana Antonette Wever graduated from high school in Aruba in 1963, her initial plan was to study law. That year, for the first time ever, a Dutch foundation called Sticusa offered a scholarship to study dance in Holland. The scholarship piqued Diana Antonette's interest and was in fact awarded to the young beauty. A career in law would have to wait; instead, Diana Antonette headed off to Holland to study for five years to be a teacher of classic ballet with a specialization in jazz ballet and Flamenco.
Luckily for Aruba, Diana Antonette decided to return to her homeland upon graduating in 1968 in order to share the fruits of her studies with her fellow Arubans. She worked for 28 years at the Arubaanse Dans en Balletschool, with an interruption of three years during which she co-founded and taught dance at Stimadanza dance school. Then Diana Antonette's dream came true in 1996 when she opened her own dance school, Skol di Baile Diana Antonette. The goal of her school is to stimulate the art of dance as well as the culture of Aruba.
Diana Antonette's interest in promoting the culture of Aruba is most evident in the work she has done through Teatro di Danza Arubano, a dance group founded in 1983. As the group's choreographer, Diana Antonette brought Aruban folk dances to both international and local stages. |
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Many of the group's performances honor the Aruban tradition called Dera Gai, a festival celebrated on June 24, the Feast of St. John the Baptist. Through dance, these performances tell the story of the killing and burying of a rooster, symbolic of the decapitation of St. John from the Bible. After the Dera Gai story is told, the dance group presents various styles of Aruban folk dance, all of which have a European influence: waltz, mazurka, and polka.
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Besides running her own dance school and serving as the director of Teatro di Danza Arubano, Diana Antonette gives courses to the teachers and leaders of Traimerdia, an after-school day-care program on the island, so that they can integrate dancing into their activities for the children. Diana Antonette has also worked at I.P.A., teaching the island's dance teachers. From 1996 to 2007, Diana Antonette worked with deaf children, introducing them to the silent language of dance. Since 2003, she has worked at Colegio Arubano, teaching students how to use their bodies to communicate and tell stories through dance. She has found this assignment at Colegio Arubano to be challenging given the self-consciousness experienced by many adolescent girls and boys, but this makes her satisfaction that much greater when her students succeed in choreographing a beautiful dance.
Of course, dance is Diana Antonette's greatest passion: she even admits that at one point in her life, she feared that it had become an addiction. This is when Diana decided to add some more balance to her life by getting involved in theater as well. Since 1971, she has been a member of the theater group Mascaruba. acting and dancing in different works performed locally and internationally. |
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| After 40 years of devoting herself to the growth of dance on the island of Aruba, Diana Antonette feels that it is now time for her two daughters to “go on,” to carry on her legacy. Both Alydia—who recently presented One in Soul—and her younger sister, Pierangely, have decided to follow in their mother's footsteps by pursuing dance careers. They both teach at Diana Antonette's Skol di Baile and are involved in their own dance projects as well. Diana Antonette is happy to see that her daughters are espousing traditional dance, but bringing in modern elements that appeal to the younger generation. Speaking of the younger generation, Diana Antonette now spends much of her time looking after her darling grandson, an activity which gives her immense joy. And like dance, this activity keeps her constantly moving! |
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