Patricia Ruanne had a distinguished career as a dancer, first as a principal with the Royal Ballet, and then with Festival Ballet, as ENB was then. She was an extremely versatile dancer; her roles ranged from Giselle to the sexy Siren in a tap-dancing version of The Prodigal Son.

Nureyev is remembered mainly as a stunningly charismatic and athletic dancer, But he also produced many works that he remembered from his days in Russia, and created others to his own choreography.

Ruanne had danced in his production of The Sleeping Beauty — she certainly had the specified looks — and when he was asked to make a completely new version of Romeo, he chose her to be his Juliet. They collaborated for many years after that, and, when she stopped dancing, she worked with him as a coach during his years as director of the Paris Opera Ballet.

There are many productions of Romeo and Juliet to Prokofiev’s 1938 score, including Kenneth MacMillan’s highly successful version for The Royal Ballet, made in 1965 — by far the best known to ballet-goers in this country.

But Nureyev was going to start from scratch.

Patricia Ruanne has also danced in MacMillan’s work, and I asked her how the two compare.

“Kenneth’s is far more beautiful. The pas-de-deux are absolutely fantastic, but Rudolf was looking in a whole different direction. He was looking at energy and an undercurrent of panic, even before the tragedy has begun to evolve. There’s a sense of urgency underneath it.

“Kenneth explores the romantic aspect very well, but the thing I find better in this production is that all the roles, even for the corps de ballet, are so well constructed.

“He used people’s personalities. The fights and punch-ups are much more realistic — there were bloody noses at rehearsal!”

I was at some of those rehearsals in 1977. Nureyev had seemed very calm, and I wondered what Patricia had thought of the way he worked.

“He had some very clear ideas — he’d obviously given it a great deal of thought.

“I don’t remember him ever gazing into space trying to find inspiration.

“We started working at night, because he was filming Valentino then, but he wanted to set out the principals’ stuff before he started working with the company. Six weeks isn’t very long to create a three act ballet.

“We thought we were just helping out because he knew us, (the late Nicholas Johnson and Ruanne’s husband-to-be Rick Jahn also took part), but we didn’t presume that we would be dancing the roles in the finished ballet. He obviously had that in his mind — he just forgot to tell us!

“With some things he knew exactly what he wanted; at other times he was more experimental and would just say ‘show me something’.

“In certain scenes, particularly the fight between Juliet and her parents and the nurse, he wanted the confusion of a fight and gave us nothing; he wanted something to come out of chaos.

“I enjoyed working with him very much, but it was hard work. The death scene in the crypt was never, ever, rehearsed! The first time it was ever seen was on the opening night at The Coliseum. “We talked about it over dinner and I said ‘are we ever going to rehearse it Rudolf?’ and he said ‘I hope we have time’, but we didn’t!

“But it worked and has never been changed!”

Romeo and Juliet is at Milton Keynes Theatre from November 2 to 6.