The State Ballet Institute, which opened in September 1950, became the Hungarian Dance Academy on 1st July 1991 and has been called the Hungarian Dance University since 1st February 2017. The institution was reorganised as part of higher education in 1983 and has operated a primary school (later a secondary school for eight grades) right from its establishment. As the school has had a dormitory, too, we could introduce a unique model in Hungarian arts higher education. Qualifications to be obtained were constantly rising to a higher level: from 1950, the institution functioned as a school of an intermediate level, from 1975 as one similar to those in higher education, from 1983 with a narrower profile in higher education, from 2006 as an academy of higher education with BA and MA programmes and finally, from 2017 as a university running BA and MA programmes.
In the last few years we have launched a 180-credit BA in ballet, folk dance and theatre dance. Classical ballet starts at the age of 10, folk and modern dance at the age of 14 and theatre dance after graduation.
