A dancer in Paul Taylor’s company is not a bona fide “Paul Taylor dancer” until he or she develops a particular curve within a phrase. You see it most readily when the dancer runs in a circle in those little scuffing-slipper steps of which Taylor is so fond —the way the entire body is magnetically flexed to the center, the spine answering that empty space, the chin and shoulder listening, as if the dancer had been turned on a potter’s wheel. Except the dancer is not clay but muscle, and the space is not empty at all, but a volume or vacuum with its own agenda. Taylor dancers run and jump, walk and crawl, jerk and twitch. But they are never more Taylor dancers than when they move in circles, even if they are circling themselves in one spot on the stage. It is in circles and rings and centrifugal swings that we see them for what they are: forces of nature.

And yet Taylor dancers don’t pirouette. Oh, scour the repertory and you might find some. These would be exceptions that prove the rule. The pirouette of classical dance takes place on pointe or demi-pointe, and is an act of high artifice, generally a three-step structure consisting of 1) a codified preparation in plié (like a deep breath), 2) up on toe and twirl (the final swirls of a Dairy Queen cone or the coloratura’s most difficult trill), 3) down and repose (to show you didn’t fall). Taylor