Kalman Dreisziger has the manner of a man in the advertising industry but as he talks, you sense his interests also lie elsewhere.
He speaks in an animated way, his hands moving with balletic grace to emphasise what he is saying. He's frank about his feelings and opinions.
His venture, Aya, is the small arm of a Dubai-based advertising firm. His description of their work – "converting the dreams of real estate firms into viable projects through the grand vision of computer-generated imagery" – reveals that he can be elaborate too in speech.
Aya creates advertising as well as interior renderings for building projects of property-developers, including the Dubai Pearl and Capitala – a joint venture between Mubadala and Singapore's CapitaLand in Abu Dhabi to entice customers.
Between his work in Dubai and Montreal, he also finds the time to indulge in his passion: dance.
He's a member of Unesco's International Dance Council (CID), is on the board of the New York Festivals Global Awards and the board of Folklore Canada International.
He is also the president of North America's largest Hungarian folkdance and music ensemble and is a member of Hungary's Muharay Association for safeguarding village heritage.
I, Me, Myself
I travel between Montreal and Dubai regularly. This backwards and forwards travel fuels my imagination. The revolution that took place in Hungary in 1956 was a watershed not only for the country, but for my family too.
My family fled Hungary and moved to Canada in 1956. I was 11 years old at the time. It was a period when the world was open to Hungarian refugees.
The period leading up to the revolution was a fascinating yet scary time. Because of the Soviet hold after the Second World War, Hungary was under Josef Stalin's rule.
I believe that Hungarians can be naïve. There is a history of intimidation in my country. As they were aligned with Germany during the war, Hungary was 'given' to the Russians for a year after the Allies' victory.
Thus began the years of Stalin's dictatorship in Hungary. He was responsible for more Russian deaths than Hitler was.
Millions of people were killed, because they were 'kulaks' – wealthy landowners. Stalin uprooted and transported the whole Chechen nation to Siberia and there was very little protest from anyone about it.
They were terrible times. It is sad that nobody knows much about it now; it's as though it never happened. I came to terms with my original environment – the dictatorship of the proletariat – because I was born there and had no other choice. Things changed when we moved to Canada.
In Canada, I could 'see' and react whereas at my school in Hungary, I would never have been able to do that. In Hungary, boys and girls went to separate schools. Canada was my first experience of co-education.
I spent my first year in Canada in a small town and remember thinking in my new class while sitting amongst girls, "How strange!"
Having experienced both restriction as well as freedom, my perspective changed. Freedom of choice is such a gift. I chose not to be 'American' having experienced another way of life and different cultures.
Me and my roots
I have not been able to keep in touch with most of my relatives because I don't know them. The ones I did know passed away. My Hungarian roots are not ecessarily family related, but my past is part of who I am today.
Everybody experiences this battle within one's self when you begin to lose touch with your past. It makes you question what your roots really mean to you.
Luckily for me, I fell in love with the Hungarian dance tradition and that has kept me connected to this part of my heritage.
There has been extensive field research of Hungarian dancing and the revival movement of the 1970s established a solid foundation for this art form. Dancing was how
I re-connected with Hungary.
Me and tradition
History and tradition interest me tremendously. If we do not indulge in retropection, we are doomed to live a naïve existence. That is one of the reasons why I like traditional dancing.
Tradition is rapidly disappearing from the world. Efforts must be made to preserve cultural traditions.
The reason for the concern is that traditional arts, whether it is music, dance or any other cultural tradition, are getting lost in the modern way of life.
We have to find a way of bringing these traditions to life in a different context, because the original context is no longer present.
Hungarians have done this effectively in order to preserve their dance tradition. They have found a way of keeping the village dance traditions alive, not as museum offferings or occasional stage performances but by opening
dance clubs where people can learn the various types of dance and music for their own enjoyment.
That's quite an achievement. The roots and consciousness
of the people lie in the soil of their tradition and it is important to constantly nurture them.
I, ME, MYSELF
Where does Dubai figure in your life's itinerary?
It's been a long journey. A colleague from Montreal – Fadi Abu Ghali, now my partner – is the reason I am here in Dubai. He asked me one day, 'How would you like to live in the Arab world?' It sounded appealing and next thing I knew, I was in Dubai!
The interesting aspect of working here is that because development is such a huge part of the UAE's economy, I am returning to the building industry.
When I arrived here I realised that classical advertising was a limited model for this region; it just was not enough for this market.
So, we began looking for resources to fit what we had to offer on to a more integrated model. That's how we came to work with real estate developers.
If I am a developer and I am starting a project from scratch, I have to go to several different sources for the things I need.
I may go to a marketing or strategic consultant to figure out the different aspects of my project's development. It's really difficult, but absolutely essential because it's not all about just bricks and mortar.
Then you may go to a branding agency for the name and development of the logo and brand identity. You will also need to address your advertising needs.
You may go to a different supplier in order to finetune your sales, renderings, videos and so on in order to bring the vision on paper to life. Events suppliers are next, because events are a really important way of making an inroad into a potential market.
The general rule is that 20 per cent of the potential will buy 80 per cent of the product. Events are a way of connecting with the top 20 per cent – the VIPs.
Companies have begun to realise that it is more effective to have to deal with one principal source for all these services, rather than bouncing between various suppliers.
A concerted, consistent and coordinated campaign is more effective. That's where our company, Aya, comes in.
We have been doing this steadily since we began operating in the UAE. We have a large database of expertise to integrate as many functions as possible.
We are now in a position to launch an integrated service solutions package that involves branding, strategic guidance, renderings, animations, models, events, traditional advertising, below-the-line advertising, and even virtual sales centres, making them come to life through technology such as laser manifestation of buildings with virtual walkthroughs. This is an exciting technology and we have people who deliver.
Very often we are called in by our clients to flesh out a lot of the design details because their architects or interior decorators may not have got round to designing everything, such as room interiors.
What have your experiences of different cultures been like?
Living under the Stalinist rule was an intense experience. It was literally like you read about in the books or see in the movies – a police state brimming with informers and intrigues under the umbrella of Russian propaganda. But I am glad I was witness to a little bit of that for it certainly was an experience to live through.
The censorship was tight. My parents would always peer through the blinds to make sure that there was nobody listening before tuning into Voice of America because the local radio channels were controlled by the state, biased and one-sided.
Canada was liberating after the stifling atmosphere in Budapest. Dubai too is an amazing and interesting place. All these cultural shifts have fashioned me into the individual I am today.
I think that one of the things about moving from place to place is that to a certain extent, it is difficult to find yourself. You cannot go back; you are not totally at home back there nor where you are at present.
But a richness in character that develops as a result of this – you are like a bridge that connects various points in history and culture.
The closest example of such a bridge as in a place too is perhaps Dubai, which is so interesting because it's the meeting point of so many cultures.
We are touched by so many that we are no longer the people we were before we experienced this unique multiculturalism. And when we go
back to where we were previously,
our vision has changed.
How did you get into advertising after studying architecture?
I studied architecture in Canada but when I started working, I realised that I couldn't do it. When I was at architecture school it was the late '60s, early '70s.
A cultural revolution was taking place at this time. People questioned old values and the leading question that we, as students of architecture, faced at the time was how to give people opportunities to feel good through the structures we designed.
When we entered the real world after graduation, I realised that no one had any kind of say on how buildings were designed or even cared about it.
They cared about the economic value of the designs; the buck stopped there. I never had an opportunity to do what I wanted to do (in architecture).
So, naturally, I was disappointed because I realised that this was the kind of trap that most people who have a university degree fall into, especially if they study the arts.
University trains you for an ideal life and then when you find yourself in real time, you are left staring at the chasm between ideology and reality.
I always liked writing. So I got into advertising because I thought it was creative. I discovered that the skills I acquired in my architecture course could be used in advertising very well.
I also had room to be creative. I am good with words and I understand visuals from my training as an architect, so I could connect with art directors and designers.
How important is it to you to keep your tradition alive?
When I was in Transylvania in Romania, I met Romanians, Hungarians, Gypsies and Germans. My son was with me and we came across a Romanian-speaking gypsy, playing a strange instrument.
He's probably the last man who plays this really funny-looking instrument, which is called a trumpet-violin. It's played with a bow but the music comes from the trumpet.
My older son also plays an improbable old instrument
that resembles a cello, but is really a percussion instrument. You can still see a trumpet-violin in Romania, but when this man dies, its music will probably die with him. Many people fail to see the tragedy of this.
However, there is hope if young people take the trouble to learn to play these old instruments and learn these old styles of music and therefore keep tradition alive.
It is also important to keep tradition authentic. What I fear is today's tendency where artists seek to modernise traditions, for in doing so, you're doing away with real tradition.
There is a temptation for people to think, 'That's an easy tune – let's add a little bass here, some keyboard elements there and modernise it.' There goes your music, your tradition, your culture – in doing this, you're missing the point completely.
A friend of mine went to Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) in West Africa, because he heard that there was an old man in one of the villages who was a respected drummer.
He found the man and asked him to teach him how to play the drum. The old man looked at him and said, 'I will teach you. But only if you stay with me for two years.'
What it boils down to is – do you have what it takes to go that deep?
