Throughout this series of blogs, I have been stressing the importance of finding friends outside the field of movement study. These friends are not movement professionals themselves, nor are they “true believers” in the power and significance of movement. They are not dancers, athletes, or “Labanites.” Instead, they come with a different outlook and skill set and often need to be persuaded that there really is something to this thing called movement analysis.

Professor Timothy Colton, a political scientist at Harvard, is a case in point.… Read More

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.… Read More

Within the Laban community, F.C. Lawrence has been regarded merely as Rudolf Laban’s “groupie.” Indeed, Warren Lamb, who worked closely with both men, observed in his unpublished autobiography that “Lawrence became so attached to Laban as to hang on his every word, promoting him (often much to my embarrassment) in guru-like terms.”

Lamb goes on to note that Lawrence “was not the most obvious candidate to partner Laban.” Lawrence was not a movement person. He was, however, one of the first management consultants in England, professionally qualified as both an engineer and an accountant.… Read More

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.… Read More

While developing ideas for the book on movement observation and analysis that became Beyond Words, I knew that I did not want the text to be narrowly focused for a movement audience of dancers and athletes. I wanted Beyond Words to be a book for anyone whose professional activities involved face-to-face interactions with people, a text that could help professionals of all sorts understand the nonverbal dimensions of human interactions.

If the book were to succeed, I needed a collaborator, someone who was sensitive to movement and, at the same time, able to contribute other professional skills and perspectives.… Read More