Since 2018, I have been a philosophical consultant for the Compagnie Pál Frenák, and, more recently a dramaturg (Cage³, Spid_er⁴, Fig_Ht⁵, Secret_ Off Man, Crazy Runners – Parad_IS_e⁶). Simultaneously with my research on somaesthetics, I became familiar with Frenák's unique organic movement system, which developed from the sign system of the deaf and hard of hearing and, over decades, evolved into a completely individual means of expression. Because Frenák, the best-known choreographer of Hungarian contemporary dance, considers Deleuze's philosophy a point of alignment, Deleuze's Abécédaire and Shusterman's aesthetics both played a role in my 2022 book about him (Horváth 2022). However, Frenák is an autonomous creator who never uses the books he reads as a concrete reference, rather, he extracts the essence of what he reads and takes inspiration from them by placing them in a totally different context. Anyone familiar with Frenák's works knows that his central theme is the libidinal energy that controls people. He researches how to express erotic radiance, repressed desire or the resonance that exists or never develops between people. Frenák opens something up to audiences, who are either drawn in or pushed away. Frenák's native language is sign language, due to his deaf mother. In the world of the deaf and hard of hearing, only continuous and intense attention is natural. His perfect knowledge of this medium and communication system adds a unique dimension to Frenák's somatic style. Frenák's work is special because since childhood, he has been experimenting with a unique language of movement, with which generations of dancers have been able to identify in joint productions over the decades. But his art is much more than that. He has been able to do what very few people do: he constantly builds and enriches the unique world in which certain themes, motifs, and emotions regularly appear. Only the harmony between the body and the soul is capable of representing the homogeneous artistic style that has characterized Frenák’s style for decades. Perhaps this is partly why we perceive that his pieces are the various manifestations of a homogeneous whole and rather than isolated choreographies, despite their fragmented nature. In my study, I examine how Frenák delves into the depths of human nature. How does his work address the myth of marriage or love triangles? How can such a feeling be realized on stage when two figures are not even touching, yet we know, we feel in our guts, that they belong together. Frenák is not satisfied with portraying superficial relationships, and he disregards patterns and norms. He is a diver delving into the depths of the soul frightened of itself, a soul that must grapple with itself to overcome its fears and its own shadows. During this investigation, the question arises: is it is possible to put into words the erotic experience that art can only partially convey? “The philosopher can speak of everything he feels. Erotic experience will commit us to silence” says Bataille in Eroticism (Bataille, 1962, p. 252.). That is the advantage that art possesses and that is why the feeling that the protracted utterance of the word “Silence” in Frenák’s pieces (e.g., in The Hidden Men) may convey. Philosophy is unable to free itself of language and, what Bataille considers the most important, “it uses language in such a way that silence never follows”, the silence of that last moment where consciousness forsakes you (Ibid, p. 274.). The atmosphere of Frenák's plays can reproduce exactly those states of mind in which awareness fails, where nothing remains but silence or madness. The question, therefore, is: how to grasp passion rendered with artistic corporality from the perspective of somaesthetics.

The protagonist of my study, George Santayana, by idealizing love and sublimating sexual desires, has become the author of an aesthetics of existence elevated to literature and philosophy. He made self-cultivation and a life of satisfying desires a philosophical problem. His life's work is based on aesthetics, but it cannot be clearly placed within either Pragmatism or Platonism. My interpretation of Santayana from the perspective of the philosophy of desire takes the philosopher out of the conservative interpretative framework. His philosophy was centred on sensory perception, and although he sought spiritualism through his Platonism, his The Sense of Beauty is based on pleasure. His personal life and individual motivations are a vague background to his poetry and theoretical writings, and it is therefore necessary to view his creative world as a whole.

According to Shusterman with the notion of somaesthetics he wants to remind the contemporary readers that "philosophy could and should be practiced with one's body rather than being confined to "the life of the mind" (Shusterman 2012, 141.)" Consequently a philosophy can be expressible by one's body especially by a dancer's body or by a choreographer's work. I consider it to be a problem that a performance is not only the artwork of a creator but also the embodiment of the choreographer's philosophy. Not every dance choreographer has his own philosophy but those who have a characteristic "universe" and a peculiar style. I am going to reveal Pál Frenák's dance philosophy of somatic style while searching for that "existential weight" behind his works that is a crucial element in his artistic universe. How is it possible to approach a philosophy emotionally? Where is the limit between sense and sensibility in the reception of a dance performance? Instead of the analysis of concrete meanings of movements in one piece of art, dance philosophy should examine those processes that lead to a certain set of emotions and associations. I feel that conversation on contemporary dance would be a relevant topic in relation to somaesthetics. In my paper, I would like to attune somaesthetics and the Deleuzian sign theory to show the spiritual richness of the oeuvre of Pál Frenák.

My theory is about the lovers of beauty who tried to aestheticize their existences in different ways, but with the same goal: To make life into an oeuvre. George Santayana created an aesthetic ontology, Fred Holland Day made a photo composition (Beauty is Truth), which is the essence of his aesthetics of existence, and Edward Perry Warren spiritualized the Male ideal shaped through the praising of the Uranian Eros. They used the Hellenic idea as a life-giving energy, they re-eroticised the philosophical thoughts about self-creation and the aesthetic way of life. The serious questions of private perfection and self-creation can be the basis of an ethics of personality. According to Agnes Heller it is always the ethics of one person. We have to illustrate it, if we want to speak about it. So, we have to examine one paradigmatic case to illustrate the essence of it.