Nicole Chantal de Weever

Nicole Chantal de Weever is a dancer, choreographer, and Broadway performer born in 1979 in Cay Hill, Sint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, to Beatrice (née Vlaun) and Wilfred de Weever. Her father worked as a general manager of a business, and her mother was employed in the civil service. From an early age, de Weever pursued dance training, studying at the Motiance Dance School under Arlene Halley and Cees van Doldren while completing her primary education at the St. Maarten Academy.

De Weever later relocated to Fairfax, Virginia, where she finished her secondary schooling at Centreville High School. During that period, she was selected for a magnet program involving twenty-five students at the Governor's School for the Arts, located on the campus of the University of Richmond, and trained with the Fairfax Ballet Company. She subsequently enrolled at the Tisch School of the Arts in New York City, graduating in 2001.

Following her graduation, de Weever began teaching through programs offered by the New York City Board of Education, working at both public and private schools. She was chosen to demonstrate the techniques of Katherine Dunham for the Library of Congress project Preserving American Dance History, and appeared as a featured performer in the PBS documentary Dancing with Life. Her performance work has included engagements with Ballet Noir, Creative Outlet Dance Theatre, and Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, with tours across the United States and performances in Africa and Asia.

In 2008, de Weever was selected as part of the ensemble portraying the wives of Fela Kuti in the musical Fela!. The production opened on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in 2009, running for fifteen months. That same year, the government of Sint Maarten recognized her as a cultural ambassador for bringing distinction to the island. After the Broadway run concluded, de Weever joined the musical's worldwide tour for a year before returning to the production for its Broadway reprise in 2012.

Also in 2012, de Weever founded a nonprofit organization called Art Saves Lives on Sint Maarten. The organization employs art therapy to support troubled youth and facilitate creative expression, organizes workshops with noted Caribbean artists, and provides cultural exchange programs enabling students to travel to other Caribbean islands or to the United States to develop their skills.