Welcome to Dansmuseet

– Free admission to the museum collections

The museum opens its famous collections to the audiences free of charge. Seize the opportunity to make a journey through the rich cultures of Asia, experience the magic of the African mask and meet the dazzlingly colourful Western theatrical art represented by the Russian and Swedish ballets in Paris in the 1910s and 1920s. Although admission to the museum collections is free, we charge an admission fee to our temporary exhibitions in the Gallerie de Maré.

Welcome to a museum which has hardly any equal in any other city in the world. Dansmuseet in Stockholm is a museum which contains so much more than the name reveals. It is a museum for the performing arts and for the visual arts, a multi-cultural museum with rich collections from Asia and Africa, and it is a cultural meeting spot right in the heart of the Swedish capital, where you will find many activities, such as lunchtime performances, concerts, video dance non-stop and certain Saturdays during spring and fall you can even come and have your first try at popular dance forms like the tango or salsa. This and much more – our popular café, for example – can be found on our beautiful premises overlooking Gustav Adolfs Torg, close to the Royal Opera House and opposite the Royal Palace.

How does this rare museum come to be in Stockholm?
This is due to Rolf de Maré (1888–1964), the Swedish aristocrat, art collector and leader of the Swedish Ballet in Paris 1920–25. In 1933 he opened the world’s first museum and research institute for dance in Paris. Les Archives internationales de la Danse became a famous centre for studies in dance and visitors came from all over the world to see exhibitions or to study in the vast library. The Archive also published its own magazine and books, arranged lecture demonstrations etc in the beautiful building in the Passy area which Rolf de Maré had constructed for his dance centre. In the late 1940s he closed his business in Paris and parts of the collections were donated to the French state, which placed them at the museum and library of the Paris Opera.
The huge collection from the Swedish Ballet in Paris and the non-European collections, Rolf de Maré brought to Stockholm to form the nucleus of the dance museum – Dansmuseet – which he opened in 1953 in the basement of the Royal Opera House. After an odyssey throughout the capital, the museum is now back on the same square where it started. It reopened in its present location - an old bank building - in May 1999.