Patricia Ruanne

Although she was a prima ballerina with the Royal Ballet for the best part of a decade, Patricia Ruanne will perhaps be most remembered for her era-defining collaborations with Rudolf Nureyev at London Festival Ballet in the 1970s, and later at the Paris Opéra from 1985 to 1996.

Born in Leeds to Anglo-Irish parents, she took dance lessons from the age of four and joined the Royal Ballet School at  13.
Graduating to the adult company, she made her debut in Kenneth MacMillan’s The Rite of Spring in 1962, taking her first lead role in his The Invitation in 1965. She quickly became a linchpin of the Royal Ballet’s touring company, and by decade’s end had risen to the status of principal.

An expressive dancer with a dramatic stage presence allied to lithe, lyrical athleticism, she excelled in classical lead roles in Giselle, Ondine, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake, while also proving to be adept at creating memorable new characters.

Joining London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet) in 1973, dancing with Nureyev in Sleeping Beauty in 1975 led to her creating the role of Juliet – The Stage declaring: “she triumphs… dancing in the white-hot awareness of love” – to his Romeo for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.

She met and later married Frédéric Jahn, Tybalt in that production, and went on to forge creative relationships with choreographers such as Barry Moreland and Ronald Hynd. Serving as the company’s ballet mistress from 1983-85, she began to mentor and influence a new cohort of dancers.

Hynd remembers her “elegance, beauty, sophistication, intelligence, musicality and fine technique… an outstanding ballerina with a vast and varied repertoire. Always a joy and an inspiration to collaborate with”.

In 1983, she received an Olivier award nomination for her performance as Tatiana in the first British staging of John Cranko’s Onegin, and gave her swansong performance in La Sylphide in 1985.

Invited by Nureyev to the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris, she spent 11 years as ballet mistress there, after which she became an internationally in-demand répétiteur while also overseeing revivals of many of the dancer-choreographer’s ballets.

As the century turned, she spent a year at La Scala Milan as its ballet director. With a gift for innovation, she then staged a Caribbean-accented Giselle, complete with live steel band, in Trinidad and Tobago in 2012 – which entered the repertoire of the Rome Opera Theater Ballet in its 2014-15 season.

Patricia Ruanne was born on June 3, 1945, and died on November 1, aged 77. She is survived by her second husband, dancer Frédéric Jahn.