She was always a goddess of dance -- even before her triumph in "Cry." The Ailey star turned artistic director stretched like there was no tomorrow.

The ovation lasted for almost 10 minutes. The solo that prompted it was only six minutes longer.

Before the premiere of Alvin Ailey's "Cry" in 1971, Judith Jamison was hardly an unknown quantity. But after it, she was a singular sensation, a headliner, the embodiment of poise and power. From then on she was unofficially America's most celebrated Black female dancer -- maybe even the world's.

Jamison, who died on Saturday at 81, owned every room she walked into. She was alive from every angle, a force of three-dimensional expression. In all of her dancing there was her electrifying body, long and tall, the image of towering dignity. Her stature was imposing, but she was pliant, too -- a container of sensations. She could move.

"Cry," a solo in which a dancer explores a woman's path from slavery and loss to a state of grace, was her signature role. Ailey dedicated it to "all Black women everywhere -- especially our mothers," and in it Jamison was a rapturous pillar of strength and sorrow.

After the costume she was meant to wear in "Cry" was deemed unsuitable at the last minute, two leotards were combined to add extra material to the sleeves. That's how long her arms were. In motion, they seemed to grow out of her back like willowy branches reaching longer and longer still, as if daring to touch the sun.

A film from a 1972 gala shows Jamison in the second section of "Cry," set to Laura Nyro's "Been on a Train." As she spins across the floor, her arms are propellers guiding her spiraling torso. There is a pause in the music, and Jamison quiets, too, dropping an arm in resignation before descending to the floor in a slow-motion contraction. Later, to the lyric, "there's nothing left to say or do," Jamison, seated, parts her legs, rocking her torso in tiny circles. She reaches, her fingers splayed and delivers the cry of the title -- a silent scream, inspired by a photograph in Life magazine of a woman with a baby during the Biafran War.

The way emotion seeps into her dancing, even on video, is searing. It's not pasted on, it's not separate from her physicality. The power of that impulsiveness makes it seem like she could reach for feelings deep inside her body and urge them past her skin to unfurl into the world.