Different
Instincts

Rita Szentgyörgyi
@ Horizon
2007. August

Conversation
with Pál Frenák

Bringing a
hopeless world into life with enthralling visuality. Pál
Frenák’s choreographies are always brave, bold and
daring. His dancers are put through a hard physical and psychological
test. Internal conviction, faith and fantasy are the foundation of
his work. The pre-premiere of the Pál Frenák Dance
Company’s new performance, a German, French and Hungarian
co-production, takes place at the Sziget Festival on 7 August. Trafó
House will host the official premier in November.

You recently
attained the age of fifty. Having reached that round anniversary, how
do you reflection both the past and the future?

PF: To quote
Edith Piaf, „Je ne regrette rien” – I do not regret
anything, including my mistakes. I have often felt something
inappropriate was happening with me, yet those occasions have also
represented an opportunity. Somehow, I don’t feel the weight of
being fifty, as if I had reached a point when I can get into
something different. I often think I should write a book about my
life experience, about all I went through as a child in the world of
the deaf and mute with its sign language, and about those twenty-four
years when I lived in Paris or Japan. Taking photographs also
increasingly interests me.

As the founder
of Hungary’s contemporary movement theatre most on tour abroad,
which of your productions do you consider the best?

PF: Strangely, I
am very fond of those which were on stage most successfully for
years. Tricks and Tracks was a box-office hit. It toured the world
from Tokyo to Berlin and it was also a great smash at the Trafó.
Nevertheless, I feel Skateboards or MILAN closest to my heart.

What
experiments in concept and form does Instincts offer?

PF: Instincts is only a working title. The final one my be
’Labyrinth’ or ’Never’. I am to make actual
faces and characters disappear in order to bring millions of faces to
the surface, so that when someone looks at it he or she would almost
see their own face. The concrete characters will also disappear in a
way, with only their spirituality remaining. My scenographic idea is
a system of circles from a ski slope, symbolising the biological
cycles, as well as the womb and the process of life.