Okwui Okpokwasili stands out, whatever she’s in. The Bronx-born, Nigerian-American dancer, actor, and choreographer moves and speaks with startling yet grounded intensity. Perhaps because it’s hard to look anywhere else, she most often appears alone or with just one other: in a cameo with the brilliant Brooklyn flex-master Storyboard P for a Beyoncé video; in an explosive duet with fellow postmodern polymath Ralph Lemon; or in her own 2014 solo and, later, film Bronx Gothic. For her BAM choreographic debut, however, the MacArthur genius and Bessie winner is working with a group. In fact, adaku, part 1: the road opens—co-created with her regular collaborator Peter Born—is about community. Set in a precolonial African village on the brink of seismic change, this disjunctive, self-described “speculative mythology” imagines a collective reckoning not only between ancestors and future generations but between the performers and us. —Apollinaire Scherr