Performance + artist conversation
The complete stage work, with an optional post-show conversation that connects its imagery and physical structures to Frenák’s larger practice.
Festivals · theatres · presenting venues
A major-stage work by Pál Frenák
CrAzy_RunnErs
Seven dancers. Two contrasting worlds. One reality running too fast to recognise itself.
01 / The work
When the running stops, another world begins.
CrAzy_RunnErs / Parad_Is_E is a visually and physically intense two-part stage work by choreographer Pál Frenák.
In CrAzy_RunnErs, bodies are driven through a parade at a speed nobody can hold. Identities, partners and strange futuristic objects change hands faster than the eye can settle. At the edge of the stage, a solitary figure keeps running on a treadmill—sometimes witness, sometimes participant, always caught inside the same system.
Movement becomes display, competition and compulsion. It is exhilarating—until it is not.
Parad_Is_E begins when the running stops. The same bodies move through a slower, older landscape, balancing between reality and illusion, past and future. Around them appear the bubbles human beings have always created: not knowing, standing apart, keeping others out.
Together, the two parts move from the accelerated surface of contemporary life to the archaic forces beneath it. Frenák does not remain outside the world he has created: he appears onstage within it.
International premiere available for 2027–2028.
Performance trailer
CrAzy_RunnErs / Parad_Is_E
“A motionless metaphysical structure—and within it, the human being, compelled to think, doubt, strive and break: in other words, to move.”
13December 2026 · 19:00
See it in Budapest
Come as our guest.
See the complete production at the National Dance Theatre Budapest, then meet Pál Frenák and the company after the performance.
02 / Pál Frenák
His work has never belongedto a political era.
Pál Frenák is one of Europe’s most distinctive and difficult-to-classify choreographers. As the hearing child of Deaf parents, he encountered non-verbal communication before institutional dance training.
Sign language, gesture, facial expression and peripheral perception became foundations of an organic movement language in which the body does not illustrate ideas—it thinks. Frenák founded his company in 1989 and later established its creative base in Budapest.
Across radically different political and cultural systems, the conditions around him changed; the artistic compass did not. For more than four decades he has sustained an independent practice without smoothing away its sensuality, risk or formal precision.
“The urgency of those who have no words with which to make themselves heard—and an underlying tenderness waiting to be expressed.”Le Monde, 1993
Selected international presentations
Centre national de la danse, ParisThéâtre des Bouffes du NordBOZAR, BrusselsWortham Center, HoustonInternationale Tanzmesse NRWOriente OccidenteKuopio Dance FestivalMadrid en DanzaMacao Arts FestivalSibiu International Theatre Festival
03 / The film
Who caresabout Pal Frenak?
More than a portrait of a choreographer, the documentary asks how an artist of radical originality keeps finding the conditions to create across four distinct political and cultural systems—without surrendering the convictions that shaped the work.
Moving from childhood in state care through emigration, Paris and a return to Hungary, the film reveals both the personal history inside Frenák’s movement language and a wider story of independent contemporary dance in Central Europe.
The film can be programmed independently, alongside the performance, or within a longer artist focus. Its place in the programme is shaped with each presenter.
- Chita Rivera Awards, New York 2025Nominated for Outstanding Direction in a Documentary Film
- Selected screeningsDance on Camera Festival, New York · Girona Film Festival · Dance Camera Istanbul · Film Hungaricum, Berlin · CineFest, Miskolc
Film trailer
Who Cares About Pal Frenak?
04 / Build a Frenák focus
Not an add-on. A way into the work.
Each module opens a specific part of Frenák’s artistic universe. They can stand alone or form a concentrated programme for festivals, theatres, universities, dance academies and professional artists.
Organic movement masterclass
A practical encounter with Frenák’s movement language: sign-derived gesture, peripheral spatial awareness, embodied communication and the changing relationship between one body and another.
Professional and advanced dancers
The body as a way of thinking
A lecture on how gesture, architecture, identity and non-verbal perception operate inside Frenák’s choreographic language.
Universities · dance academies · public programmes
Bodies under transition
Frenák’s career as a lens on political change, artistic independence and the development of contemporary dance in Hungary and Central Europe from 1989 to the present.
Lecture · seminar · contextual programme
Documentary + conversation
The 49- or 99-minute film followed by a conversation with the filmmakers, Frenák or the company. It can be presented independently or as part of an artist focus.
Cinemas · festivals · universities · theatres
A tailored Frenák focus
A two- or three-day constellation of performance, film, masterclass and lecture, shaped around the presenter’s context rather than a fixed sequence.
Designed with each presenter
One artistic language. Multiple points of entry.
The strength of the programme is not the number of formats but the coherence between them: the same uncompromising movement language can be experienced onstage, embodied in the studio, understood through political history and encountered through film.
05 / Touring essentials
Everything needed to begin a conversation.
Duration60 min
Performers7 dancers
Touring party10–12 people
Minimum stage12 × 12 m
Clear height8 m
Availability2027–2028
Technical outline
White dance floor; six curtain elements; projection and treadmill. Spoken text is currently available in English and German. The company travels with the production’s textile elements; a detailed rider, fee, second-night rate and routing options are available on request.
Full artistic credits
Concept and choreographyPál Frenák
DancersZoe Lenzi, Léna Árvay-Vass, Eoin Mac Donncha, David Leonidas Thiel, Gergely Cserháti, Viktor Banka, Vivian Ferencz
MusicMáté Hunyadi, Levente Bencsik
DramaturgDr Nóra Horváth
Set and costumeVictoria Frenák
Animation and videoAndrás Fehér
LightJózsef Pető
SoundMátyás Fekete
International touring & partnerships
Begin theconversation.
Tell us about your programme, stage and audience. We can send the full recording, technical rider and a presentation proposal shaped around your context.
Fruzsina Móricz
International touring and partnerships · Company FrenÁk
+36 70 363 6300