Tomorrow night’s gala program at New York City Ballet will feature eight ballets — and one dancer’s comeback. Principal dancer Janie Taylor, 26, will take the stage for the first time since a calf injury sidelined her a year ago. But her return is going to be a gradual one.

Ms. Taylor will dance in “Purple,” an excerpt from NYCB artistic director Peter Martins’s 1987 work “Ecstatic Orange,” which has not appeared onstage since 1994. The choreography requires her to fold herself into back-breaking gymnastic positions, but it calls for a relatively small amount of pointe work. At first, it seems an odd choice; Ms. Taylor is a dancer with a vibrant sense of attack and quickness. But the near-acrobatic ballet was chosen as a means of getting this still-recovering dancer onstage again.

“I’m kind of better at upside-down things anyway — it’s fitting for me,” she said with a laugh. “This is my kind of dancing.”

“Purple”calls for a dancer of uncommon agility and delicacy, who can snake over and around her partner’s torso and through his legs while he kneels, or twist into the piece’s signature pose: the ballerina in a backbend with the top of her head serving as one pillar of support and her legs — bent, with her feet on pointe — as the other. “Physically, she’s perfect for it,” Mr. Martins said of Ms. Taylor.”She has such beautiful shape, even though she hasn’t been onstage for so long. Her body is the type of body that would look wonderful in these sorts of contortions.”

Bringing this ballet — and this dancer — back was a team effort. Mr. Martins gave a videotape of the piece to Ms. Taylor, who watched in consultation with her physical therapists, Marika Molnar and Michelle Rodriguez, to determine whether she was physically capable of executing the choreography. They agreed that she was.

“I thought, it’s simple but elegant, and doesn’t focus on steps that are too exhausting,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “I thought it would give her an opportunity to get back onstage, and the fulfillment of being in a rehearsal again, which is always motivating,” she said. “[When] you’re part of the dance community again, it gives you a huge boost from an emotional perspective.”

Ms. Taylor’s injury occurred during a rehearsal for “The Nutcracker” last year, just 10 months following her promotion to the rank of principal. “I felt my leg kind of fatigue during my rehearsal,” she said. “Then I was sitting on the couch after and I felt kind of, like, a line go up my leg, and I thought that was weird. When I stood up, I couldn’t walk through my foot — it felt like it was going to really rip,” she recalled. Overnight, her leg swelled. Though tests and x-rays showed nothing, Ms. Taylor and her doctors determined she had torn her calf.

Her efforts to recover — through a combination of physical therapy, Pilates, acupuncture, and swimming — yielded steady but slow progress. “I went through some periods where I just did nothing to try to just let it be and heal,” she said. “And then I would start trying a little stuff, and it wasn’t happening, so I would take some time again with nothing. It’s kind of been back and forth, just trying to see how much further I can get.”

With persistence, she managed to progress through her therapy exercises and began minimal ballet exercises, but could not — and still cannot — take a full-length ballet class, the mainstay of any dancer’s day. At a certain point in her progress, though, Ms. Taylor found herself caught in the muddy waters between rehabilitation and recovery. She faced a dilemma common to injured dancers: Without the ability to train daily, she could not regain the strength and stamina needed for onstage performances.

During the summer, while the company was in residence in Saratoga Springs, Mr. Martins suggested making Ms. Taylor’s return to the stage part of her remedy — to bridge the gap between sidelined and stage bound with performance itself. The act of pushing toward performance, they imagined, could be mentally and physically therapeutic. “At least it gets her out there, and, even psychologically, it gets her back,” Mr. Martins said.

The trick was finding a role Ms. Taylor could perform with minimal impact on her calves or feet. “Purple” fit the bill. The piece is a seven-minute excerpt from “Ecstatic Orange,” a plotless, three-part ballet originally choreographed on former NYCB principals Heather Watts and Jock Soto. Ms. Watts and Mr. Soto, in fact, are the only dancers who have ever performed the work.

In preparation, Ms. Rodriguez created exercises for Ms. Taylor based on the ballet’s choreography, gradually increasing their difficulty and intensity in the weeks preceding the rehearsal period.

Now with three weeks of rehearsals under her belt, Ms. Taylor shows few signs of limitations in rehearsal, but is cautious about her actions in advance of opening night. She and her partner, Sébastien Marcovici, run through the piece just once during a short, 30-minute rehearsal. “I didn’t want to push it too much because I want to make it to Tuesday,” she said later in the cafeteria of Lincoln Center’s Rose Building. She’s somewhat soothed, though, by the presence of Mr. Marcovici, her boyfriend and frequent onstage partner.

While Ms. Taylor will not dance in the company’s production of “The Nutcracker” this year, she plans to perform a limited selection of repertory during NYCB’s winter season beginning in January, possibly including “Afternoon of a Faun.” And, she added, “Obviously, I want to take a whole class.”

For now, though, her thoughts — and nerves — are focused squarely on “Purple” and furthering her recovery. Even the smallest victories still hold significance. “Just putting a leotard on, I’m just like, ‘Yes!'” she said with a fist-pump. “It’s a little treat for me. A little taste of hopefully what’s to follow.”

eorden@nysun.com