There is something undeniably sweet about this book. On one level, in line with the cover’s pretty pink text, it is a simple, unpretentious story about a girl who loved to dance. But on another level, the unfolding tragedy is Shakespearian – an effect amplified by the unfussy prose of Anne Allan, a long-time professional dancer and choreographer.
Years after everyone else cashed in their Diana chips, the Scottish-born author has finally decided to tell her story. The book opens in 1981. Allan is a dancer and ballet mistress with the London City Ballet, and the performance is Swan Lake; but the drama happens offstage when she receives a call from Anne Beckwith-Smith, lady-in-waiting to Diana, Princess of Wales. Prince Charles’s stratospherically famous new bride has requested ballet lessons.
Schedules permitting, Allan indulged the young princess’s love of dance in one-to-one sessions on a weekly basis. The lessons were secret, and their effect transformative. Diana’s ‘head continued to look at the floor. 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.’ The pupil ended the first lesson by giving her teacher a small posy. Many cherished handwritten notes would follow, and it was the beginning of an important relationship. The princess’s metamorphosis from Shy Di to Britain’s most glamorous asset began there, on the sprung floor of a Hammersmith dance studio in a simple leotard.
The classes spanned nearly a decade, ending only when Allan emigrated to Canada in 1989 after her marriage fell part. For eight precious years she was privy to Britain’s most famous ‘fairy story’.
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