Some dancers shake the earth with their power. Others, like Coreyonté, alter the atmosphere with the tilt of a wrist, the arc of a breath, the poetry of a port de bras. “There’s power in subtlety,” they say. “It’s not about what you do—it’s how you do it.” When Coreyonté moves, even silence bends to listen.
Born in Chesapeake, Virginia, they discovered ballet at fifteen and were so transfixed by its possibilities that only two years later they uprooted their life to train at Oregon Ballet Theatre’s School. From 2017 to 2021, they were shaped by the rigor and beauty of works by Nacho Duato, George Balanchine, and Niccolo Fonte, and by 2021, were named a Company Apprentice. It was a period of transformation, a personal renaissance of neoclassical and contemporary artistry that carved into them both discipline and daring.
Today, Coreyonté performs with Moveius Contemporary Ballet, yet in Vietnamerica: The Musical, they step into a wholly new frontier: their first musical, where dance is fused with history, voice, and community memory. For them, the work is not about understanding every word of the Vietnamese language sung in rehearsal—it is about surrendering to the sentiment. “The lack of comprehending the language is transcended by the sentiment oozing out of the score,” they explain. Growing up with vast space to themselves, they filled it with drawing, music, and dance—learning to move not just within space, but with it. Now, in Vietnamerica, they weave that same awareness into choreography that bridges cultures: empathetic, searching, unafraid to ponder the weight of another people’s memory.
In rehearsal, Coreyonté is both luminous and mischievous, keeping long days buoyant with private sound effects— “a fart sound here, a womp-womp there”—that soften the grind without ever dulling their focus. They’ll tell you their ritual is sunlight, caffeine, and music, everything a girl needs. Their castmates, they say, are effervescent, warm, and generous, a family whose artistry keeps them curious and playful.
Being part of Vietnamerica has revealed to Coreyonté the universality of longing and resilience. “I’ve realized it is a powerful thing to be connected by, and aware of, desires and values that often prove to be universal,” they reflect. On September 7, 2025, at Capital One Hall in Tysons Corner, audiences will not just watch Coreyonté dance—they will feel history press against their own bodies, chords struck deep within themselves. They want you to leave not remembering the steps or the shapes but how the dance made you feel, as if a question had been placed inside your chest.
This process has inspired Coreyonté to consider new possibilities, to flirt with time and space in their own creative work. It has shown them that their capacity to create is shaped not only by movement but by newness itself. In Vietnamerica, they dance not only for themselves but for the chords of a diaspora, for the power hidden in subtlety, for the reminder that dance is less about what you do than the way it transforms those who witness it.
Witness Coreyonté subtle power and poetry. https://www.ticketsonsale.com/tickets/vietnamerica-capital-one-hall-tysons-9-7-2025-5818424