The dancer Patricia Ruanne, who has died aged 77, was one of a select group of friends who worked long hours with Rudolf Nureyev to create his production of Romeo and Juliet for London Festival Ballet’s contribution to the Queen’s silver jubilee celebration in 1977. Nureyev’s ballet was faithful to Shakespeare’s play, and he knew his Juliet needed to be strongly motivated.
The critic Alexander Bland said after the first night: “Patricia Ruanne acted Juliet with a genuine power, as a strong positive girl for whom luck runs out, and tackled the difficult dancing without faltering.” Richard Davies noted that “this Juliet … with her high forehead and cheekbones, has stepped straight out of the Renaissance”. Ruanne’s career was not defined by just one role, but her Juliet reflected her ability as both a dance-actor and a ballerina.
Her dancing career took her all round Britain as well as to mainland Europe, Australia and America. Initially she enjoyed performing with the Royal Ballet’s touring section, particularly under John Field, who gave opportunities to emerging talent and, as a man of theatre, encouraged his artists to create rounded performances. The lessons she learned from Field remained with her and when she in turn began to coach dancers, she followed his approach. “I was always interested in working with dancers. I used to coach at Festival Ballet in the later years when I was still performing, and I loved it … It’s such a wonderful feeling seeing people understand and develop. With coaching, all you can do is to help understanding. If the physical element has not yet totally kicked in, that’s not so important, as long as the mind understands what’s needed, because it may be that in two years’ time the physical part will happen automatically, as long as the dancer understands how it must be, what it is they should be searching for in the role.”
Among the more dramatic works she performed during her career were the Young Girl in Kenneth MacMillan’s The Invitation, and the Eldest Sister in his Las Hermanas. She was Katya in The Storm by André Prokovsky, based on Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s play and, towards the end of her dancing career, Tatiana in John Cranko’s Onegin. In this she was particularly moving as the more mature woman of the final act, especially when dancing with her second husband, Frédéric (Ric) Jahn, as Prince Gremin and then with Ben van Cauwenbergh as the distraught Onegin.
She also excelled in more modern works. She created the Woman in Red in Norman Morrice’s The Tribute and danced in Hans van Manen’s Grosse Fuge, Tilt and Twilight. In the last of these, a duet performed to John Cage’s The Perilous Night for “prepared piano”, she performed the first half in heeled shoes and the second barefoot. However, by the time Ruanne was dancing Van Manen’s works in the early 1970s, the touring sector of the Royal Ballet had become the smaller New Group in which she had no opportunity to perform traditional ballerina roles in ballets such as The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Giselle, so in 1973 Ruanne, with Paul Clarke and Kerrison Cooke, made the surprise decision to move from the Royal Ballet New Group to London Festival Ballet. For Ruanne’s development it was a good move, and it was dancing with Nureyev in his Sleeping Beauty in 1975 that resulted in her creating Juliet.
With London Festival Ballet, Ruanne had the opportunity to create mature women in alluring roles. These included the Siren (temptation in many guises including Marlene Dietrich and Ginger Rogers) to Clarke’s Son in Barry Moreland’s The Prodigal Son (in Ragtime); the charming and sophisticated Woman in Red in Ronald Hynd’s The Sanguine Fan and the woman who cannot believe her fiance has been killed in Michael Pink’s 1914.
She was born in Leeds, the elder child of Joan (nee Castell) and Robert Ruane (she added a second n to create her stage name) and sister of Paul. She began dancing classes at the age of four and was later coached by the York teacher Louise Browne, who recognised her talent and recommended she apply to the Royal Ballet School in London, which Patricia joined at 13. She graduated into the Royal Ballet, where she made her debut in 1962 in MacMillan’s Rite of Spring, but soon moved to the Royal Ballet Touring Company and was promoted to principal in 1969.
In 1972 Ruanne married the Royal Ballet dancer turned photographer Richard Farley. However, the marriage was dissolved when she began her relationship with Jahn, whom she later married and who survives her.
While still dancing at LFB Ruanne began to coach colleagues, and after her farewell performance dancing La Sylphide in 1985 she was invited by Nureyev to become a ballet mistress at the Paris Opèra, where she remained until 1996. After Nureyev’s death she became a repetiteur, primarily working with her husband on mounting Nureyev’s ballet all over the world.
She was also the acting ballet director at La Scala, Milan, for the 1999-2000 season. In 2012, with Jahn, she staged a Caribbean version of Giselle accompanied by a live steel orchestra for the semi-professional dance company Metamorphosis, based in Trinidad and Tobago.
• Patricia Ruanne, dancer, born 3 June 1945; died 1 November 2022
