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We have danced to music as long as we have been making music. In some African languages, the same word means both “music” and “dance”, because to have one without the other is simply unthinkable. Music and dance are natural partners. Words and music are a powerful combination, too. But what about words and dance? Some recent productions suggest that dancing to spoken word instead of music can work. But that feels, to me, like a rarity: there is a fine line between dancing a story and merely miming its action. This latter tends to use words as narration and the dancers as props, rather than storytellers.

You don’t need to speak a language to understand dance. For all that many cultures have a highly specific dance language, it arguably doesn’t matter if the dancer is French, Thai or Martian: you will be able to respond to it physically or emotionally, even if you wouldn’t be able to comprehend a word. But the moment that choreographers introduce language, all that changes. Protein Dance‘s recent show, LOL (Lots of Love), which used lonely-hearts ads as the backdrop for its dancers, fell into the trap of dancing the words rather than dancing to the words. Despite a slew of positive reviews, it left me cold: I felt that it lacked heart, despite being all about love and relationships. And much of that was to do with the use of words, which caught good dancers in weird choreographic traps – they were unable to escape the mundanity of the text, the delicacy of the movement subsumed by the saccharine narrative.

It is easy for the choreographer to become tied to the literal meanings of the words, thus losing other emotional resonances. A vocabulary of movement, gesture and response is surely different from a literal vocabulary, so mapping one straightforwardly to the other is likely to be plodding. Dancing to words can stifle creativity, in other words, and it is only in rare cases that it can help movement to blossom. Phoenix Dance‘s piece at Cambridge Arts theatre last year, which used the prologue of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie as its backing, managed to both depict the story of Laura, Amanda, Jim and Tom and to cut to the emotional heart of the play. The lack of music here gave the piece a dreamlike quality – appropriate for this “memory play” – and was highly effective. The dancers captured the heart of the story without resorting to clumsy mime.

So, it matters what the words are, just as it matters what the music is. Poorly chosen, sentimental or trite text is likely to lead to similar dance. If the words don’t work, the dance is likely to be spoiled.

I gave a talk to Warwick students last night, as part of the careers service’s ‘Working in publishing and online publishing’ event. I talked a bit about my personal experience of working at ArtsProfessional, and gave the best advice I had to give. While I don’t pretend to be an expert (I was slightly perturbed by 150 earnest students taking notes as I talked!), I have spent a lot of time thinking about publishing, the blurring boundaries between paper and digital, and the place that I and other young people can hold in a rapidly-changing world. I didn’t make predictions about where publishing is going, because people smarter than me have done so – and the short answer is that no-one really has a clue anyway. Anyway, I thought more people than were in a lecture theatre in Coventry last night might find some of what I had to say useful, so here it is. Bear in mind that they are just notes, and that I was much more eloquent and hilarious in the flesh.

MAKING IT IN PUBLISHNG AND ONLINE PUBLISHNG.

Build up a portfolio: You’re more likely to get a work placement once you have a portfolio to show people. Do you blog/review/write anywhere? A blog is your online portfolio, so think about design, check spelling/grammar and remember anyone could be reading it. Remember that NOTHING ON THE INTERNET EVER GOES AWAY. EVER. Would you be comfortable with a potential employer seeing your posts? You need to balance posting regularly (once a week, minimum) with not waffling – post when you have something to say. The more you write the easier it gets – try having opinions on news stories, commenting/reviewing whatever you’re readings, expanding on a side-note from your most recent essay…

Start job-hunting early: This is the best advice I can give you. You’ll be revising for your exams, then taking your finals and wanting a break, but by the start of the summer most things will have gone. If you wait until after your exams, it’s only going to get more competitive. It’s frustrating and can be depressing – many places don’t acknowledge applications – but applying early shows that you’re keen, that you can balance tasks and that you’re thinking ahead. Think about your CV – what can you put on it that’s relevant to the job in question and shows you off to your best advantage? This may sounds obvious, but I’ve seen some pretty terrible CVs since I started working at AP – spellcheck it, proof read it, get a friend you trust to proof read it. Make sure that you tweak your CV with each applicatio, so that it’s as relevant as possible. A good way to go about it is to take each point in the person specification and address it in your CV or cover letter: e.g. If the person spec asks for someone highly-organised, specifically say that you are extremely organised, and give one concise, concrete example of something the proves you are. Ditto motivated, a self-starter etc. Think about what each point actually means – they tend to be heavy on buzz words – and address it accordingly. For example, highly-organised might mean able to keep several balls in the air (particularly in an administrative role, which a lot of entry-level jobs are) or it might mean an ability to unfailingly hit deadlines (in an editorial assistant role, for example).

Learn from others: Formal training isn’t essential, but it can be useful and can show that you are serious. There’s always more to learn, and a course or two to sharpen your skills and technique is always a good thing. Look for personal recommendations before choosing because there are thousands.

Think about whether you want to go into publishing or online publishing, because they are very different: Traditional publishing is a shrinking field, and jobs are scarce and getting scarcer. Online publishing, on the other hand, is growing rapidly. However, there is still a prestige to working in trad publishing that is lacking in the online world, and a lot of online stuff lacks the quality control of paper-publishing: no space constraints can mean editing is sloppy and the writing is poor. Not always, obviously, there are lots of great websites, online magazines, online news services etc, but most reputable publishers try to do both – they will have a digital side to whatever else they do. Publishing needs skills such as a good eye for prose, editing/proofing skills, the ability to hit deadlines, etc, whereas online publishing often requires HTML coding, familiarity with social media etc as well.

N.B. Some of this draws on thoughts from being on a Guardian Careers panel on arts journalism. The full transcript is here and a summary can be found here. If anyone wishes to talk about any of this further, or has any questions, I can be reached on: contact@eleanorturney.co.uk or Tweet me @eleanorturney If you agree with anything I’ve said, or wish to develop the debate, please comment below.

Ooooh, this made me angry!

Guardian Theatre blog points out the habit theatres have of refusing to sell single seats if doing so would leave a single seat or a block of 3 which will be harder to sell. I am seriously not amused. As an avid theatregoer who is also fairly skint, going alone is often the way. Lots of my friends who might be persuaded to go if they had the funds will not accompany me if tickets are expensive, and while I like to treat people when I can, it’s not always practical. I have had this happen to me, where I have been forced by an online ticket website to buy a higher price ticket because to sell me the cheaper one would leave a single seat free – I only know this because I have frequently been told that my choice of seat has sold out only to see empty seats during the show. Even accounting for the fact that some people will not turn up having paid, it happens too frequently to be just that. Why should theatres discriminate against people who want a single seat? Surely, but surely, the whole ‘bums on seats’ philosophy argues against turning people away who are happy to pay?

But, then, I can see the twisted logic behind it – people are more likely to want to buy tickets in pairs than any other number – but, crucially, this system discriminates not only against people wanting to sit alone but also against people trying to book in 3s or 5s. That is definitely counter-intuitive in terms of ticket sales: if people go with friends they are more likely to see the theatre as a social event and to go more often – and 3 people are going to have more friends who they will tell about the show. Any marketing person knows the value of word-of-mouth recommendations. And, conversely, the damage that can be done if people complain that they can’t book seats.

I would also like to note that the Guardian is using the word ‘singletons’ to refer to people wanting to buy a single seat. I do not approve if they mean it in the Bridget Jones sense. If it’s mathematical terminology, then OK.