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Okwui Okpokwasili

Okwui Okpokwasili is a Nigerian-American artist, actress, performer, choreographer, and writer. Her multidisciplinary performances draw upon her training in theatre, and she describes her work as at "the intersection of theatre, dance, and the installation." Okpokwasili is known for appearing as Vertigo in the television miniseries Agatha All Along.

Early life
Okpokwasili was born August 6, 1972, in The Bronx, New York, daughter of Igbo Nigerian immigrants who moved to the United States to escape the Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s. She attended Yale University, where she met filmmaker Andrew Rossi, who made a documentary about her piece Bronx Gothic. ==Career==
Career
Okpokwasili has become a key figure in the New York experimental dance scene. She is known for several one-woman performances and for her frequent collaborations with Ralph Lemon and Peter Born, her husband. Born often directs and designs the lighting and staging for Okpokwasili's performances. In April 2017, she performed at Mass MOCA, responding to Nick Cave's massive installation work Until with a site-specific dance. The performance was co-sponsored by Jacob's Pillow dance center; choreographer Bill T. Jones performed earlier in the series of artists responding to Cave's installation. She played the part of KK in Josephine Decker's 2018 film, ''Madeline's Madeline''. In a theatrical role, Okpokwasili performed the part of Hippolyta in Julie Taymor's 2013 production of Shakespeare's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. In 2023, Okpokwasili starred in The Exorcist: Believer alongside Leslie Odom Jr. In 2024, Okpokwasili played Vertigo of the Salem's Seven in Agatha All Along. ==Works==
Works
Pent Up: A Revenge Dance This was her first collaborative piece with her husband Born. She won a 2010 New York Dance Award and a 2009 Performance Bessie Award for Outstanding Production. Centering on a mother and daughter, the work considered cultural and generational clashes. Bronx Gothic In this 90-minute one-woman semi-autobiographical performance which she also choreographed, Okpokwasili plays two young black girls talking about growing up, feeling vulnerable, and discovering sexuality. As the audience enters, she is already on the stage and is trembling in a dark slip. Eventually, she begins to speak the dialogue of the two girls in conversation. Cultural critic Hilton Als praised this piece in a 2017 review of ''Poor People's TV Room''. When I Return Who Will Receive Me A group performance involving seven female performers singing, speaking, and dancing, this work was staged in the underground magazine of Fort Jay at Governors Island in July 2016 as part of The River to River Festival. This performance included fragments of research on Nigerian history as it relates to women's bodies that were used to develop ''Poor People's TV Room''. In an interview with Jenn Joy for Bomb magazine, Okpokwasili stated that the piece "is about a critical absence that I feel when a tragedy happens—like the kidnapping of girls by Boko Haram and the Women's War in Nigeria. My work is not explicitly about the incredible women in northern Nigeria who came together to shame their government into doing something to get these 300 abducted girls back. African women are not just victims of colonizers and oppressive or corrupt governments. They have been building collectives and advocating and fighting to be visible for a long time. I don’t want to make documentary work—but I don’t want these women to disappear, either. My piece is about visibility." ==Awards and honors==
Awards and honors
Okpokwasili has received several Bessie Awards for her performances, including works she has written and developed herself. In 2018, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, a prestigious "Genius Award" intended to enable recipients to further develop their talent. Residencies • 2013: New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Choreography • 2013: Visiting Artist at Rhode Island School of Design with Ralph Lemon • 2014–15: Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Extended Life Program • 2016: Creative Capital Grant • 2015–17: Randjelovic/Stryker Commissioned Artist at New York Live Arts ==Filmography==
Filmography
Projects are feature films unless otherwise noted. ==References==
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