Since her death, the cultural idea of Princess Diana has become that of a woman trapped within a rigid, suffocating monarchic system. From The Crown to Kristen Stewart’s Spencer to recent documentaries and books to Meghan Markle’s experiences in the royal family, the notion of marrying into the royal family has begun to look rather constricting. Now, a new royal biography has been released that once again reinforces the idea that Diana struggled to feel free within the family.
In Dancing with Dianaballet instructor Anne Allan recounts her time as Diana’s dance teacher. According to Allan, Diana reached out to her through her lady-in-waiting, Anne Beckwith-Smith, in 1981 shortly after her wedding to the then-Prince Charles to request dance lessons. Allan was, at the time, a teacher at London City Ballet. The pair began meeting for secret weekly sessions.
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As Allan recalls in her book, Diana was initially timid and lacking in confidence. “[Diana’s] head continued to look at the floor,” she writes in the book. “I gently noted that the head was the heaviest part of the body… I wanted her to feel the freedom that dance can give, and she did.”
According to a review in The Spectator, Allan’s lessons soon helped Diana find the physical and emotional confidence she had bee missing. In 1985, Diana’s new confidence led her to plot a surprise performance for her husband’s 37th birthday—Allan helped her prepare a duet to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” with dancer Wayne Sleep, which they performed on stage at London’s Royal Opera House.
Diana was reportedly thrilled by the experience. “As she came off from the final bow, Diana said to both of us: ‘Beats the wedding!'” recalled Allan.
Charles, however, gave a reportedly muted congratulations to his wife. “She made her way to Charles, and as she stood before him, I could sense she desperately wanted his approval,” writes Allan. “He said, ‘Well done, darling’, and turned to talk to someone else.”
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Diana famously went on to dance with John Travolta that same year during a dinner at the White House.
Elsewhere in Allan’s book, she recounts how Diana reportedly began to confide in her teacher about Charles’s affair with Camilla in the years before her divorce.
