To the Editors:
I am writing you because I was disturbed by Eva Resnikova’s article on Mark Morris in the January, 1987 issue of The New Criterion. The most upsetting thing in it is Resnikova’s attack on Mark Morris’s sexuality that seems to come out of nowhere. What are the “apparent female sexual characteristics” she attributes to him? What does she mean by “effeminate” as applied to Morris? These are charged terms to throw around in such a declamatory manner—and I feel that this kind of attack by innuendo is a dirty weapon for a dance critic to use.

But I miss any real descriptive support for any of the points she makes. She cites one moment in Morris’s Marble Halls, a fall at the end of the second-movement adagio which she sees as a pratfall. She doesn’t explain what it was about the motion itself, or the performance of it, or the context of the dance, that led her to interpret this moment as funny. She simply declares it was such a moment. Then, from this one willful citation, she spins out a theory about Morris’s intentionally limited dance language, and his possible motives for limiting himself. She never acknowledges the subjectivity of her own seeing, which is something I think any halfway decent dance critic must acknowledge, given the general unavailability of dance texts to refer back to.

I don’t mind Resnikova’s opinions—I think a vital discussion of the pros and cons of Mark