It’s not just North Americans who, in the last half decade, have been digging up their roots. Excavation and exculpation have overtaken Latin America as well, with roots at least as tangled and various. But for the Afro-Colombian troupe Sankofa Danzafro, from Medellín, this commitment came with its christening, 27 years ago. Besides the self-evident Danzafro, Sankofa means “to return to the root”—the root, as it happens, of nearly a quarter of Colombians. Founder-choreographer Rafael Palacios’ latest, Behind the South: Dances for Manuel, may be the most explicit yet in its African invocations: Yoruban badass trickster god Changó is in charge. But whatever the dance-theater piece (for example, there is the stupendous City of Others touring France and Spain this spring), Palacios deploys dance’s secret powers: rousing image, riveting ambiguity. —Apollinaire Scherr