URBAN BUSH WOMEN

Donna Perlmutter seems to have found the Urban Bush Women to be an offensive disappointment (“Urban Bush Women at Center,” Sept. 21).

I found the New York-based dance-theater company to be a gleeful surprise. I thought their “shimmying and shaking” were nothing less than virtuosic feats of energy and expression. I thought their disdainful “primitive terms” were profoundly human.

I don’t think I was the only one either. Although Perlmutter testified that several blacks in the audience joined her in sitting “stony-faced throughout the evening, never applauding,” my companions and I, that same afternoon, saw the Urban Bush Women receive what we believe was a unanimous, interracial standing ovation and a round of applause that demanded several returns to the stage.

I’m sorry that Perlmutter can be so busy being erudite, so caught up in her “liberation codes” and ideas of what “a black show must be” that she can fail to appreciate the great gifts that are given her. I am even sorrier if, in this case, it has cost Los Angeles the return of such a wonderful company.

DIANE MOSS

Los Angeles