Lakatos started acting as a child with the Lakner-Róna troupe. Though she preferred the stage to dance, believing one could express oneself better with words than with movement, she studied at the State Opera's ballet school and became a solo dancer with the company in 1950. She performed nearly all of the major roles in the contemporary repertoire as well as in classics such as Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. Her style was like no other dancer's and she left her rivals far behind. Several generations of Hungarians today can say of Lakatos that there was none like her. She had such dynamism, such a feeling for rhythm and such passion that it was as if a fire burned inside of her.
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Eszter Szúdy, who is the curator of the exhibition, regrets that a series of interviews with Lakatos in the 80s was never completed. Something always came up: she had to perform, or there was something wrong with her dog, then, the unexpected news - she had died, Szúdy says. The preservation of her legacy was also just as unexpected. Lakatos's first partner in the opera, János Ösi (who left the opera in the 50s to take up puppetry) discovered on a walk that the new owners of Lakatos's old villa on Gellért Hill had thrown out all kinds of documents she had left in the house as they had no idea where to take them. Among the items recovered was a portrait of Lakatos by the painter Mihály Szilágyi. Around the same time, the television producer Vera Hámos came forward to say Lakatos's husband had given her many of the dancer's belongings for safe keeping. Many of these items are on display in the exhibition.
