| History | Warren Lamb, the son of Rose (nee Wilkinson) and David Lamb, was born in Wallasey in 1923 and later educated at Wallasey Grammar School. He left school aged 16 to join Lloyds Bank. In 1941 he enlisted in the Royal Navy but returned to banking following active service during World War II. Warren Lamb met Rudolf Laban in 1946 and he was impressed by his system of notation and its possibilities for use in behavioural analysis. Warren Lamb left Lloyds Bank and enrolled at the Art of Movement Studio in Manchester, where he trained under Lisa Ullmann between 1947 and 1950, whilst working closely with Rudolf Laban and F C Lawrence to develop assessment techniques for use in career selection and planning, which was initially known as Laban-Lawrence Industrial Rhythm. In 1950 Warren Lamb joined F C Lawrence's Company Paton Lawrence and Company. He also worked professionally as a dancer, and was a member of the British Dance Theatre Company between 1950 and 1952. He also worked as the company Business Manager.
In 1952 Warren Lamb left Paton Lawrence and Company and opened his own consultancy company, Warren Lamb Associates. His work was initially called Action Profiling but is now known as Movement Pattern Analysis. His work broke down the decision-making process into three staged - Attending, Intending and Committing. Working with Pamela Ramsden, Lamb continued the development and application of the Action Profile, which is based on Effort-Shape principles, and the distinction of 'Gesture' from 'Posture behaviour. Warren Lamb's consulting practice grew, and he and his colleagues provided individual assessments and top team planning to clients such as Trebor, Eversheds, Lansing Bagnall, Dunlop, Albany International and General Electric Company. While most of his professional activity was in the industrial and commercial field, Warren Lamb also worked with sculptors, artists, musicians, actors, teachers, therapists and psychiatrists. He developed and refined the Movement Pattern Analysis approach, pioneering its application to management work worldwide. In 1982 Warren Lamb founded Action Profilers International. He resigned in 1992 due to a dispute over the definition of the term 'polarities'.
Warren Lamb's contributions to the field of movement were rcognised internationally, as he received two 'Lifetime Achivement' awards, one from Motus Humanus in 1995, and the other from the International Congress on Movement Analysis in Education, Therapy and Science in 2010.
Lamb taught in various university and school settings. Among his former pupils are Irmgard Bartenieff and Judith Kestenberg. His lengthy collaborations with Kestenberg influenced Laban Movement Analysis training in the United States, and led to the development of the Kestenberg Movement Profile. He taught Effort/Shape to Irmgard Bartenieff and helped her to establish the Effort/Shape Department of the Dance Notation Bureau in New York which later became the Laban Institute of Movement Studies.
Warren Lamb published the books 'A Kinaesthetic Approach to Piano Technique' with Ronald Meachen (1962-1962), 'Posture and Gesture' (1965), 'Management Behaviour' with David Turner (1969), 'Body Code' with Elizabeth Watson (1979), and 'A Frameworkd for Understanding Movement: My Seven Creative Concepts' (2012), along with a number of unpublished manuscripts and journal articles. |