This chapter's end is just the beginning for dance

The audience will get to choose how Illusion Palace finishes

Wilhemeena Gordon has named her new dance work, Illusion Palace - Chapter One, for good reason.

The gothic fairytale, complete with an innocent heroine called Lost, an Evil Queen attended by a troupe of Red Ladies, 12 Dancing Princesses and a Pack of Wolves, is to be continued.

"There will definitely be a chapter two - it might even become a trilogy," Gordon promises.

That is not just because Illusion Palace is the expression of what Gordon holds dearest, and is a $50,000 to $100,000 show being produced on a $6000 Arts Alive and Creative Communities budget supplemented by donations, sponsorship and many other generosities.

But because, in this first outing, it does not have an end.

"It is a giant experiment in relinquishing control," says Gordon.

Cream buns, red high-heels, glass slippers and 20 cascading bodies all feature in the work - the first from her new company, Wilhemeena Gordon and Co - which uses the fairytale as a metaphor for relationships.

"It is about all the hurtful things human beings do to each other in our search for the perfect love, the perfect relationship, whether that is between a man and a woman or a mother and child," says Gordon.

"We are constantly fed images, in movies and television, of the perfect relationship. We spend lifetimes struggling to find that fairytale life of ethereal perfection - the illusion palace.

"In reality we are human beings: fumbling around, trying to make it work - and in the process missing the real moment, the magic of how different we are and how fantastic that is."

Gordon's conclusion is that the secret to success is to give up control, to go with the process and to allow what will be to be.

So she is walking the talk in surrendering the ending of Illusion Palace - Chapter One to the unknown.

The audience will decide, she says. Everyone attending the show will be given paper and pencil as they arrive. And where the ending of the show should be, they will be invited to contribute their own conclusions.

At season's end, the cast and Gordon will vote for the best option.

The winning contributor will be invited to help produce Illusion Palace - Chapter 2 complete with ending, happy or otherwise.

And that version will hopefully tour, she says.

"So this is just a small part of something bigger, it is just the beginning of something.

"It is really exciting. When you make a work you usually have your two months, then it is performed and it's gone. But I am not going to just leave this.

"For me it is petrifying. It is just like a relationship, and like giving up that control of how it will continue, to just live in the moment.

"It is really difficult for me, a challenge I have set up for myself, because I am always the sort of person who has everything worked out in advance, down to the finest detail. It just feels like a huge gap left at the end, the most important part.

"But the anticipation of not knowing is actually quite good."

Gordon came to dance late - as a 19-year-old. She completed two years of the difficult three-year degree in dance at Unitec and then, inspired by practitioner Raewyn Thorburn, trained in the Skinner Releasing Technique in the United States, She worked with several contemporary companies, and added Butoh training to her repertoire.

Four years later in 2000, she returned to Auckland to complete her Unitec degree, and that same year was asked to take over from Thorburn teaching the Skinner technique in the dance faculty.

The technique is predominantly a dance technique to release old postural habits, find more efficient ways of moving and access creativity in life and art.

Gordon has a significant body of work to her credit, including her choreography for the 2004 and last year's Trash to Fashion Awards. She also runs Soul, Centre of the Body and Mind, in Titirangi.


Performance

* What: Illusion Palace - Chapter One
* Where and when: Maidment Studio Theatre, Mar 30-Apr 1