F.C. Lawrence became a friend of movement study through his devotion to Laban and his visionary capacity to see the potential of this field. Daniel Ellis, a member of Lawrence’s staff, became a friend of movement study only grudgingly, and for very different reasons. Here is his story.
Daniel Ellis, an industrial engineer brought up on stop-watch studies, aggressively pursued increased productivity from the workers of client companies. Hard-driving and unrelenting to the core, Ellis was outspoken in his skepticism of everything to do with Laban. Ellis was particularly confounded when Lawrence hired Warren Lamb, still a student at the Art of Movement Studio, to work with clients. Their first assignment with a weaving company got off to a bumpy start, as Lamb describes:
Ellis “barked challenging questions at me about how was I supposed to help him, and how was he supposed to introduce me to the client, what was this ‘movement stuff’ I was supposed to do, how could it contribute anything and how on earth could a student from a place called the Art of Movement Studio know anything about industry?”
Once on site, Lamb dived into the weaving shed and began to observe the workers, making detailed effort observations. Ellis periodically pounced, demanding to see what Lamb was notating and questioning what it meant. Lamb stood up to Ellis’s challenge:
“I could ask questions too. Was a highly Directing Effort needed to place the thread (I would demonstrate), how much pressure was required in tying a knot, was speed important – in brief what were the essential movements without which the job could not be done?”
Working with Ellis, Lamb drew up a detailed specification of the job that could be related to his movement observations. As he wrote, “there was just enough element of science about it to appeal to the engineer in Ellis, although I am sure in the end he was won over mostly by the accuracy of my assessments of any worker’s productivity, and the fact that it was based purely on movement observation.”
Ellis eventually asked if Lamb could advise on the suitability of an Office Manager. Using the same trait and factor approach the two had developed for assessing line workers, Lamb amassed about forty or fifty requirements of the job, all in movement terms. Then he observed the Office Manager and matched his observations against the job specification, offering Ellis advice on the man’s relative strength and weaknesses. As Lamb recalled, “Ellis was so impressed he always subsequently called on my advice for appointing key people in client companies. I gained a lot of confidence.”
More significantly, in facing Ellis’s hard-driving and unrelenting challenges, Lamb was able to make the vital jump from the observation and assessment of manual workers to the observation and assessment of managers. In other words, Ellis was a critical to the development of what has come to be known as Movement Pattern Analysis.
As for Ellis himself, Lamb reports that he “eventually became a great supporter and advocate,” assisting in the formation of the Laban Guild and supporting a number of Laban activities. His early death due to a heart attack “was a great loss to the cause.”