The Mix Master of Dance : Choreography: David Gordon defies categories by creating works that are as much theater as dance.

David Gordon has made a career out of defying categories. A maverick choreographer-writer-director who first made his mark with the experimental Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s, he’s turned in recent years to making interdisciplinary stage creations that are as much theater as dance.

He’s also forged some unusual ways of developing his works. Currently, for instance, he’s conducting a four-week workshop at UCLA in which he’s shaping and refining the second act of his work-in-progress, “Punch and Judy Get Divorced.” The unique laboratory situation mixes undergraduate and graduate students with professional actors and members of the David Gordon Pick Up Company.

The project’s sponsorship is also uncommonly collaborative. Co-commissioned by UCLA’s departments of theater and dance, the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts and the Mark Taper Forum, the second act of “Punch and Judy Get Divorced” will be given a free public performance Friday at 4:30 p.m. at the UCLA dance building, Room 208.

Another work by Gordon, the 1991 Bessie and 1992 Obie Award-winning “The Mysteries and What’s So Funny?,” with music by Philip Glass and set by Red Grooms, will have its West Coast premiere Nov. 12-15, at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theater. It will be performed by Gordon’s Pick Up Company.

Known for his love of questioning as an end in itself--both offstage and on--Gordon, 56, revels in working with a mix of people and perspectives. “When I began to work with actors I realized that dancers had never asked me all those questions,” says Gordon, whose works have become increasingly text-driven in recent years. “And if they had asked questions, I wouldn’t have given them all the information.”

That kind of control, in fact, is fairly common practice among directors. “I had some idea that if I gave people too much information, they would do too much to support that information,” says Gordon. “Then I would have a performance which didn’t allow the audience to discover the material, that would hit them on the head with it.

“Since I rarely am happy when I am in the audience for something that is hitting me on the head, I determined that the way to avoid that was to keep the performers a little bit in the dark. But actors will not allow you to keep them in the dark. They want to discuss what the possible circumstances are and how their character develops.”

This has actually helped Gordon. “I began to realize that if I was really a smart fellow, I would trust the people I worked with and let them know when things were getting obvious,” he says. “I’d tell them the things that I’m thinking about this material and learn from their questions.”

There is, however, such a thing as too much feedback. And while Gordon has not found it to be the case at UCLA, that can be one difficulty of working with students, or mixing students with professionals.

“In some instances, although not particularly here, students have more of that kind of questioning than professional actors, because they are younger and working too hard too fast,” says Gordon. “Professional actors know that in time questions are going to get answered simply by allowing the thing to develop.”

By integrating professionals and students, Gordon enables the artists to learn from one another as well as from him. “The younger actors have somebody more experienced to watch and see how they work. And I don’t think it’s bad for the more professional actors to get a look at what this level of inexperience looks like.”

Both the veterans and the novices, though, have influenced Gordon’s tinkering with “Punch and Judy Get Divorced.” “The input into the script comes from the way people read the work and the kinds of decisions they make about performing it,” he says. “I begin to understand how the printed page looks to somebody else. I do a lot of rewriting. I write whole new scenes. I change lines because over and over again they’re read in what I think is the wrong way.”

“The Mysteries and What’s So Funny” was also workshopped extensively during a series of residencies at nonprofit theaters. It was shaped further with students at New York’s Playwrights Horizons Theatre School and at the American Repertory Theatre.

Both “The Mysteries” and “Punch and Judy Get Divorced”--the first part of which was developed in a similar UCLA workshop last fall, then aired by KTCA/Alive TV in Minneapolis in June and KCET-TV in July--focus on men and women’s relationships.

“ ‘The Mysteries’ was about building a relationship with a partner as if there was an art to staying in touch with each other,” says Gordon of the work that features French artist Marcel Duchamp (portrayed by Gordon’s own partner and longtime leading lady Valda Setterfield), an older couple named Sam and Rose, a 30ish couple called Mr. and Mrs. Him, and sundry others.

The younger pair’s problems especially perplexed Gordon. “He doesn’t know where his career is going and she can’t remember who she was because she’s Mrs. Him,” he says. “I kept thinking about those people and also about the people who stay married for 50 or 60 years.”

These archetypal characters and situations reappeared in “Punch and Judy,” a dance Gordon created for Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project. In “Punch and Judy Get Divorced,” Act I, the sparring couples surface yet again, embroiled in Commedia-style comic-tragic battles.

In “Punch and Judy Get Divorced,” Act II, however, some changes have taken place. “I began to consider what happens if they separate and I just decided arbitrarily to go off with the women,” explains Gordon. “Everyone has gotten their divorce or the thing they were intending to get and now all the men play women.”

“There’s a 20-year-old, a 40-year-old, a 60-year-old and an 80-year-old,” says Gordon, alluding to one way in which the range of age in the cast has been an asset. “It’s very ironic--all the terrible Punches turning into Judys in the second half, talking about their lives without these guys.”

For ticket information for “The Mysteries and What’s So Funny?,” Nov. 12-15, 8 p.m., at UCLA’s Wadsworth Theater: (310) 825-2101. Tickets are $20 and $25.