Eden Davies’s introduction to movement study began in 1965 when she started to work for Warren Lamb’s English consulting firm. Lamb appeared to her to be a successful young businessman with a remarkable method of assessing aptitude. Davies’s job was to sit in while Lamb interviewed clients, discuss the notes Lamb had taken (“neat hieroglyphics with verbal notes like ‘raised left arm’”), then write a report for the client. She only caught glimpses of another side of the businessman – through photos of him as a dancer and references to summer movement schools.
Nevertheless, Davies remembers that in the three years she worked with Lamb, “I understood I was witnessing a remarkable talent. At the same time I was all too aware that it was impossible for me to explain to others what I knew to be effective without it sounding like a gimmick.”
In the 1990s Davies began to work with Lamb again when he asked her to collaborate on a book. Now, she recalls, “I began to understand the theory of Movement Pattern Analysis. We would discuss movement and its promotion and how to get the word out to a wider audience.”
Since that time Davies has done a great deal to get the word about movement out to a wider audience. The initial collaborative project with Lamb became Davies’s first book, Beyond Dance (Routledge, 2005). This was followed by a book and CD Rom documentation of Lamb’s work (An Eye for Dance by Dick McCaw, 2006) and Lamb’s final book, A Framework for Understanding Movement: My Seven Creative Concepts (2012). Both of these works were produced by Davies’s publishing firm, Brechin Books.
In addition, Davies has generously hosted introductory courses on Movement Pattern Analysis and meetings of Movement Pattern Analysts on her estate in southwestern England. She has been equally generous in her support of the Warren Lamb Archive, housed with the Rudolf Laban Archive at the National Resource Centre for Dance (University of Surrey, U.K.) and in assisting the Warren Lamb Trust.
In recognition of all she has done, Motus Humanus is presenting its first, “Friend of Movement Study” award to Eden Davies at the “Lamb Legacy Lives” celebration this May.