Pitch Madness B-4: Adult: THE MUSE

Genre: Adult women’s romantic fiction

Word Count: 110,000

Pitch:

In this modern re-imagining of Pride and Prejudice, a big-shot choreographer and a young dancer in his piece must overcome both dance company politics and their initial dislike of each other to fall in love.

Excerpt:

A dancer’s life is a series of small routines: the same exercises in the same order: pliés, tendus, battement jetés. Bandages wrapped around the same toes, the ones that, despite dime-sized calluses, always rub and blister by afternoon rehearsals. The same faces in company class, the same bodies with their minute variations – long legs or longer legs, thin neck or thinner neck, small head or smaller head. The same schedule: company class, rehearsal, performance. Repeat. The programs may change, the casts may change, the audiences may change, but the routines – pliés, tendus, battement jetés; class, rehearsal, performance – endure.

That morning, however, was different. That morning the dancers of Ballet Theater of New York walked into the studio, fresh and alive. They danced the first exercise, pliés, with the grace of Swan Lake. Legs sliced crisply through during tendus and jetés. By rond de jambes, sweat beads trickled down foreheads and fell in droplets to the floor. A man sat at the front of the studio, arms folded across his chest, blankly looking out at the company of dancers. Every so often, he glanced down, scribbled in a notebook with a thin black and gold pen, and then looked up, expressionless.

He was William Darcy, the Ballet Theater legend, the one in the company’s old promotional poster hanging in the lobby downstairs. William Darcy, back at the company in a new capacity: to create dance.

Mr. Boddy is found in the Bathroom draped over the toilet. The medicine cabinet is wide open, a bottle of Turmeric herbal supplement capsules and an empty glass spilled in the sink.