Inside Princess Diana’s Secret 9-Year Dance Lessons: ‘She Was So Raw,’ Says Former Teacher (Exclusive)

Diana’s dance teacher Anne Allan shares how their secret sessions forged a close bond, providing the royal with a much-needed outlet for her deepest struggles

Princess Diana was once the "Dancing Queen," and the woman who guided her passion for dance is finally sharing her story.

Anne Allan, who taught Diana in hundreds of secret dance lessons, has written a revealing new book titled Dancing With Diana; A Memoir(out Sept. 10). The sessions, which continued on and off for nine years, are brought to life in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, where excerpts from the book reveal the pair's close bond and how their time together gave Diana an outlet for her most intimate struggles.

Just weeks after Diana’s royal wedding to Prince Charles in 1981, Allan, a dancer and ballet mistress with the London City Ballet, received an unexpected call asking if she could take on the princess as a private student. During their first lesson, Allan greeted Diana with a curtsy, flowers, and the title "Your Royal Highness," but the princess simply shook her hand and said, "Please call me Diana."

Speaking from her home in Toronto, Allan, who has rarely spoken publicly about her time with the princess, tells PEOPLE that she wrote her book partly for her 4-year-old granddaughter, Siena, and to share “the other side of [Diana], the dancing side of her, the beauty within her.”

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Diana, just 20 years old and newly wed, found in Allan a confidante with whom she could candidly discuss her personal struggles and the complexities of royal life—including her pregnancies, her battle with bulimia and the increasing unhappiness in her marriage to Charles.

The dance class became a sanctuary for Diana. “She loved to dance. The minute she started to move her arms, you could see the feeling that it brought her," Allan tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "She was able to be herself. She loved to move and loved to have fun." (Allan remembers Diana being "gobsmacked" after her dance with John Travolta in 1985. "It was absolutely adorable," she says.)

It also offered her a safe space to share both her joys and her sorrows. “If something was on her mind, she would say so,” Allan recalls. “Later on there were days where she would come in and just talk a little bit.”

It was during these sessions that Allan first heard about Charles’ love for an “older woman” and eventually learned her name: Camilla (then Parker Bowles, now Queen Camilla).

She also witnessed the future King’s frosty reaction when Diana and her friend Wayne Sleep, the acclaimed British dancer, surprised him by dancing to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” at a charity event on a London stage in 1985.

“She just wanted him to be thrilled,” Allan says, believing that Diana was eager to impress Charles. “When you feel that somebody doesn’t love you, that has an effect on you. She kept thinking that there was love there and that there would be love there. And I’m sure there was.”

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Allan admits to feeling “a bit helpless” as Diana confided in her. “I was thinking, what can I do? But I also knew that wasn’t my place. It’s not just a friend who’s going through something—there was much more at stake for her. And she truly loved Charles," she says.

To inspire her writing, Allan revisited the bundles of heartfelt letters and thank-you notes Diana had sent her over the years. “She’d have a full day of duties, but she would never go to bed until she had finished her correspondence,” Allan tells PEOPLE. Diana’s notes were often sprinkled with early versions of emojis—little smiley faces she doodled herself. "They were always charming and fun,” Allan says of the letters.

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The lessons ended in the late ’80s as a tumultuous time loomed for Diana. In 1992 her father died, and later that year she and Charles separated after the publication of Andrew Morton’s explosive book Diana: Her True Story—In Her Own Words. The couple divorced in 1996, and just one year later, in August 1997, Diana died following a car crash in Paris at 36.

Today, 27 years after Diana’s death, Allan reflects on the princess's lasting impact. Allan, who watched Diana’s funeral surrounded by cherished mementos—including a pair of mini silver ballet shoes that Diana had specially made for her when they parted in 1989—says the enduring fascination with Diana stems from her humanity. “It’s because she was so human. She was so raw in how she expressed herself. That was just who she was—an open heart.”

Read more about the unique relationship between Anne Allan and Princess Diana, and see an excerpt from the book in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.

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