The Line Becomes a Spiral: The virtuosity of Alvin Ailey proposed an alternative to the forward march of 20th-century art history.

The article focuses on the legacy and impact of Alvin Ailey, a pioneering Black choreographer whose work offered an alternative to dominant 20th-century art history narratives. Drawing from diverse influences such as ballet, Afro-Caribbean dance, and Broadway, Ailey developed a distinctive modern dance vocabulary that expressed Black American experiences of beauty, pain, and resilience. His 1971 piece *Cry*, performed by Judith Jamison, challenged minimalist trends in dance by embracing virtuosity and emotional power rooted in personal and cultural history. The article situates Ailey’s work as a necessary intervention in a predominantly Eurocentric avant-garde tradition, highlighting how his approach reshaped understandings of modernity and artistic lineage from a Black perspective.