Patricia Ruanne A conversation with a ballet répétiteur Part 1: Keeping Dance

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Bill Bissell: I’ve certainly read your name in publications across the years, but being an American, I suppose I viewed you as part of a European community that I didn’t ever really experience live or gain exposure to. For all the closeness of the dance world there is also a geographic set of boundaries that separate us. However, you did dance in the United States and I’m wondering if you could begin by talking about the circumstances of those visits?

Ms. Ruanne: My first guest appearances in the United States were in Tulsa and Hawaii, and I mean it was just absolutely great fun. And then when Rudolf had created Romeo and Juliet for London Festival Ballet (now English National Ballet), we went to America to the Metropolitan Opera House and also to Washington. So, that was my big official step into America, which was terrific—it was a great success for the company especially since it had always been the Royal Ballet’s territory. We went on Rudolf’s back because he was the pull of the production, which was fairly sensational.

Patricia Ruanne in a performance with London Festival Ballet, no date or information on production, possibly Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty. Photo: Anthony Crickmay

BB: Does New York hold the same sort of seductive powers over dancers in European companies that it has on U. S.-based companies?

Ms. Ruanne: I think everybody in this business is particularly absorbed into the image of New York being the pinnacle—that if you can make it in New York you’ve made it professionally. But I’m not sure that everybody in Europe has quite the realization of how important this experience can be. Though I think dancers are aware that the wider the audience they reach the better it is for them as artists, I’m still not certain that they realize just how crucial it is and how stimulating it is to touch a different public.

BB: In looking at the trajectory of your career, how would you assess the choices that helped to define you as an artist?

Ms. Ruanne: All of my work in my professional life as a dancer was based in England where I started with the Royal Ballet. All I did was cross the river to Festival Ballet, which was the same thing but different. I’ve worked all over the world, but I needed a home. I needed a company. I did do lots of guest performances, but I never really, really enjoyed that life. I was never happy with the guest circuit like certain dancers. I couldn’t bear being tossed into a production and being surrounded by people who you don’t really know as colleagues. You don’t have a lot of time to work with them or with each other on the production. You are just inserted into something, and I found that deeply unsatisfactory. Any performance is the pulling together of a lot of people. It’s not just the star. And I was only comfortable when I was with a group of people that I knew and there’s an enormous contribution that comes from feeling everybody on the stage. So, my whole background was in Royal Ballet, the touring group of the Royal Ballet and then I had the demented pleasure with working with Ben Stevenson at Festival Ballet and it was just wonderful.

Patricia Ruanne on tour in Newcastle, 1980. Photo: Richard Farley

BB: What about your career as a coach and ballet mistress, how did that develop?

Ms. Ruanne: 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. I loved working with the young adults and then seeing their performance. It’s such a wonderful feeling seeing people understand and develop. But I don’t know that I would have had the courage to put myself forward as a ballet mistress or somebody who did it as a profession. But Rudolf saw it, and he said, “Well, just come and just shut up and just do it.” So, I worked with him for many years, you know, taking rehearsals and all the rest of it. And my learning process continued for a long, long time after I stopped dancing because it’s a different skill to teach and coach dancers. You become a different type of transmitter. So, I think that he, in the end, inevitably had the greatest influence on the direction I went after I stopped performing.

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. That’s what they are working towards and that’s the ideal: that they understand how to get to that point of knowing what the search is about. If they haven’t got it quite yet that’s not something the public necessarily is going to know or recognize. It’s a degree of perfection that we should be aware of, and that dancers should be aware of, which is why I so often hear dancers say “that’s not how I wanted it, not the way I want it, it’s not why I rehearsed it, it didn’t come out.” Dancers are so frequently disappointed when they know that they understand what they’re supposed to do, but they don’t have all of it under control yet.

Coaching is not just about technical issues however, it is also about sensibility. The role of coaching is really transmitting. The big issue here is: you can transmit all your life, but you have to be received by the listener—you can’t force anyone to switch on their radios.