Born and raised on the beautiful Caribbean paradise island of Curacao, I was born in 1981 as the eldest of a nest of three girls. Since I can remember I’ve been singing and dancing. Every family gathering ended with people getting guitars out of their trunk, finding buckets laying around accompanied by wooden spoons or simply sticks in the yard, keyboards were right at hand and just about anything that could make a sound was used to produce music for our entertainment till the morning light.
Nice youth, such fun memories!
It was in primary school that I started playing the
cuatro (typical Venezuelan musical instrument) in the school choir called “Los
Trovadores” and singing along in all sorts of school functions. During my high
school years I also took part in our school choir while outside of school I
sang in our family gospel choir called “Vivimos Cantando”. Throughout all this
period I participated in all kinds of singing contests and have a lot of
trophies to remember this time by.
And that was just the singing part. When I was 7 I started with classical
ballet lessons. After I broke my left arm (nothing ballet-related though) I
stopped dancing classical ballet. As a form of therapy I joined a synchronised
swimming team and did “water ballet” all the way till halfway high school.
After synchro I took up dancing again, this time it was jazz ballet and I also
joined the street dance show group at my gym.
After high school I switched Curacao for The Netherlands, were I studied Social Science Informatics at the University of Amsterdam. It was here that the flame for musical theatre started to burn. I followed a few musical courses at the university’s creative center and afterwards I joined Amsterdam Musical and participated in a few productions. During my years as a student I also sang in different (gospel)choirs all over the country, vocal groups and entertainment/cover bands. But I wanted to do more and explore my talent to see where it can take me, so I started to take acting lessons in Amsterdam, took up dancing again in Amsterdam, followed international musical courses in London and France, and joined another musical theatre group called De Musicalwerkgroep.
There’s still so much to learn and so much ground to cover, so the sky is the limit… I don’t know where the wind will blow me, but I’m ready for whatever crosses my path!!!
Luv, Onana