'Paul Taylor' a portrait of a dance master

'Paint doesn't talk back,' Paul Taylor muses in Kate Geis's absorbing new documentary, 'Paul Taylor: Creative Domain.'

But dancers do, and choreographers need dancers. Taylor seems to have figured out how to make this work: His dancers, as seen here, don't talk back much, either.

They're too busy working and trying to please him, to give him something more than he asks for.

Geis wisely plants her camera in the rehearsal room, and mostly leaves it there.

Taylor, now in his 80s, a cigarette dangling occasionally from his fingers, rules here, and he's a benign if enigmatic leader.

His dancers see him day after day, but the way they know him best, one says, is through his dances.

As for Taylor, he seems to intuit what he needs to know about them. (He casts two dancers, a couple but not yet public about it, as a couple.)

'Creative Domain' shows us a Taylor dance, 'Three Dubious Memories,' taking shape in a matter of weeks.

We see the hard work, of course, but also the practical solutions to practical problems, as Taylor moves bodies this way and that, giving simple commands.

Through it all, Taylor's creative mysteries remain intact; a master of the casual and the vernacular (a good way to learn about movement, he says, is to watch football halftime shows), he nonetheless approaches the mystical.

'Oh, well, time for a new one,' he says after the premiere of 'Three Dubious Memories.'

Maybe Geis or some other enterprising filmmaker should take heed: After watching Taylor work, you become curious about what this process looks like for other dance makers.

Time for some new ones?