A very shy voice goes, Is this Wayne Sleep? This is Diana. But she wants to ring you up because she has a special request to make. One day, a few years into her lessons, I asked the dance captain, So, how is Diana doing? What is she like to dance with? And she responded, Oh, she’s so lovely and so keen. This was the only place she could see all of that under one roof. The reason I’m saying this is because that’s what Diana loved - she loved everything that movement had to offer. Everyone had to be able to do all of those four disciplines, which was the first time it had ever been done.
I’d been on tour mostly all my life, and I formed my own dance company, DASH, with the best contemporary, tap, jazz, and ballet dancers in the country. When did you two begin to conspire about the dance? So I sent my dance captain down to London to meet her whenever Diana was free. However, I couldn’t come and teach her because I was always traveling. She wanted to keep fit not at the gym but with dance. But what she originally wanted was somebody to teach her about dance when she took it up again. When me and Diana did meet, we had something in common in a funny sort of way, and that bonded us. Let’s just say they stuck their noses up at that. Mistoffelees when Cats premiered on the West End. I wasn’t welcomed back to the Royal Opera House at times, because they thought I was untoward when I went “commercial” for a bit of time - Andrew Lloyd Webber had hired me to play the first Mr. She was a bit of a loner and that’s something we had in common. What was your relationship with Princess Diana like prior to this spectacular moment? It’s brought home to me how much our friendship meant to each other. Have you watched The Crown’s reinterpretation of your dance? Read on to learn more about why Diana was keen on that particular song, the audience’s actual reaction, and Sleep’s post-dance meeting with Charles.
Decades later, Sleep still considers it to be one of the defining dances of his career, and he was happy to reminisce with Vulture about the experience. ( The Crown framed it as a birthday surprise.) Sleep and Diana were able to practice in secret for weeks leading up to the evening, with only a few people privy to the “very Bob Fosse” moves that they were perfecting. Wayne Sleep, an accomplished dancer and choreographer, was Diana’s partner in pizzazz on that memorable evening - the duo had been friendly with each other for years leading up to the performance, with Diana summoning him to help her concoct a special Christmas present for Prince Charles. Unlike some of the creative liberties the show has taken in recent years, Diana’s dance was very much a real-life tabloid sensation when it occurred in December 1985, although the circumstances surrounding it were a bit different. She boogies down to Stevie Nicks with friends at a club, right on the cusp of being a paparazzi target she roller skates to noted babes Duran Duran as she acclimates to her new palace digs and, at the beginning of episode nine, she tries (and fails) to impress her husband, Prince Charles, by performing a contemporary dance routine to Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” in front of thousands of adoring Royal Opera House patrons. There are few moments of joy for Princess Diana to experience in season four of The Crown, but when they do arrive, they’re often tethered to music.
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