Teaching Diana to Dance

“Dancing makes you feel heaps better” – Diana

In 1981, after the wedding of the century, Anne Allen, a dancer and ballet mistress with the London City Ballet, was offered an unusual assignment. Her Royal Highness Diana, the Princess of Wales, wanted dance lessons. Would Anne be her teacher?

Anne and her royal pupil were soon meeting at a private studio for the first of hundreds of secret weekly one-hour lessons that were never on the princess’s official schedule and never discovered by the ever-lurking press. Under Anne’s direction, Diana mounted her spectacular debut on the stage of Covent Garden, videotaped a never released solo performance at Her Majesty’s Theatre, and made clandestine backstage visits to ballets and West End shows to indulge the Princess’s passion for dance get as close as she could to the lives and work of real dancers. 

Over the course of nine years, teacher and pupil became close friends. Diana appreciated having an outsider to whom she could speak candidly about her challenges with her husband, her health, and her place in the royal world. They would talk, laugh, cry, hold each other, and—always—dance. 

Most importantly, Diana learned to express her true self in physical movement. By her last class, the Princess had learned to carry herself with confidence, poise, and grace, both inside and outside the studio. Dance, says Anne, had “nourished and renewed her soul.”