Who Cares About Pál Frenák* (I do, and you should too)
- dora
- Mar 13
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 13
The Dance on Camera Festival presents Who Cares About Pal Frenak, directed by Glória Halász, as one of their 2025 feature film selections at Symphony Space. The documentary follows French-Hungarian contemporary choreographer Pál Frenák from his tumultuous childhood to his inventive career in dance.
*Quote from Pál Frenák, the title of the film as well
Pál Frenák in his flat in Paris
I found myself smiling and bashful, nearly giddy, when discussing Who Cares About Pal Frenak, a dance documentary directed by Glória Halász featured in 2025’s Dance on Camera Festival. As I relayed the film to a friend, I yearned to impart the same charming, brazen nature Frenák so readily radiates, while secretly wishing to keep him and his work all to myself. It seems witnessing and learning about the Hungarian-French choreographer, through Halász’s elegant lens, stirred up a creative energy one might call inspiration. Discussing the film was like sharing the last bite: initial reluctance that gave way to collective pleasure.
The film takes on the sprawling lifespan of Frenák’s personal and artistic evolution, from his challenging childhood to his subsequent success as a dancer and choreographer. As three dancers sit topless with their heads bowed and backs toward the camera, their musculature undulating under warm lighting, it becomes evident that Frenák’s choreography is not just nuanced but inventive. The dancer’s hands embrace their own torsos so they appear to be kissing someone we cannot see—Frenák transforms the childish optical illusion into a locus of maturity, melding sensuality and play with precision. Snippets like these showcase Frenák’s oeuvre as he narrates his personal history in his native language, Hungarian. Halász entwines these performances and interviews with clips of the spry, lanky leading man jaunting about sunny Paris and Budapest. He visits landmarks of his past, unites with his mother, and stretches at home and on vacation. All the while, we see his dancers in the studio and on-stage writhing with acrobatic animalism and theatrical panache. They raise their legs to their ears in Twins (2009) and traverse metal jungle gyms in Birdie (2015) with serpentine mobility, their limbs vibrating to synth scores. These moments of movement mirror the confinement and subsequent freedom inherent to Frenák’s life story.
Pál Frenák with his mother
Born in 1957, Frenák’s life began during a bleak period of Hungarian history, the year after the Hungarian Revolution, in which the nation lost in their attempted uprising against Soviet power. He was the eighth hearing child born to deaf and speech-impaired parents who struggled to make ends meet. His father suffered greatly due to mental illness and, despite his attempts, couldn’t manage to support the family sufficiently. Frenák tells us he often went to bed hungry and wasn’t very outspoken as a child due to his semi-silent upbringing. After his father’s sudden passing, his mother dropped him off at a state institution, akin to a boarding house/orphanage, at a mere six years old. It was there Frenák discovered his movement language. He would often find himself standing alone before a mirror, twisting himself into varied contortions and haphazardly engaging in intuitive movement therapy. It is this wriggling and disjunct usage of appendages that comes to life as we watch dancer Milán Újvári in Mil An (2006) act as both mover and puppeteer. Dividing the dancer in half to engage with the puppet falls within Frenák’s repertoire of impactful symbolic shortcuts. He interrogates concepts like identity, gender, companionship, and sex through clever techniques that range from strategic lighting decisions to intricate prop work. Frenák draws inspiration from butoh, a Japanese dance form originating in the late 1950s created by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, which embraces chaos and resists definition. The darkness and characteristic absurdism of butoh emerges in many of Frenák’s pieces by way of fractured storytelling. Philosophy and architecture also influence Frenák, as he investigates notions of sensitivity and action à la Gilles Deleuze and incorporates set design through angular structures in works such as CAGE (2019), Un (faUN) (2016), and Birdie.
Pál Frenák dancing his blue dress solo, MenNonNo
“He just wants to see honesty,” says one of Compagnie Pál Frenák’s veteran dancers. This much is made clear through grueling yet promising rehearsals in which Frenák refuses an easy way out, coaxing spontaneity from his determined yet sensitive dancers. As the movers fling themselves at an inflatable boxing ring rehearsing To_R (POMANĂ) (2018), their bodies slowly transform into conduits of Frenák’s will, repeating the sequence over and over with varying levels of subtlety. Frenák can be temperamental in the pursuit of his vision—a quality I contend with dismissing due to the visual splendor of his pieces, but cannot go without acknowledging.
Like anyone, Frenák has shortcomings—however, none he seems unwilling to admit. He details the complex relationship dynamics he’s engaged in with his wife and daughter, fessing up to his absence and subsequent presence in their lives. They, too, candidly confide in the camera, sharing their feelings toward him and his work. Despite Frenák’s prioritization of travel and career, the pair make their love for him clear with respect for his work that seems to shield the three from any serious resentment. The family reads as impenetrable. As does Frenák; we learn he survived serious bouts of depression and suicidal ideation creating the solo titled MenNonNo (2000). Clips of Frenák preparing for the solo play throughout the film as he twirls around himself in a lengthy blue gown, engulfed by a turquoise whirlpool of fabric.
In the dance world, it’s uncommon to gain access to the intimate details that comprise a choreographer’s inner world. Choreographers frequently resort to elusive, stoic projections of self due to their positioning as powerful forces that form and shape dance. Since embodied language often speaks for choreographers, it is refreshing to witness a story told through both movement and verbiage. To witness Frenák’s openness concerning his personal history provides valuable perspective into the life of an artist whose work has literally saved him. For dance to be depicted as a means of not only self-expression but also of psychic survival reignites my belief in it. The aesthetic wonder of Frenák’s work, his and his dancer’s candid eloquence, and Halász’s skillful cinematographic eye, simply serve as a plus.
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