Atlanta Ballet's Moulin Rouge (R)

Here are a few articles about Atlanta Ballet's season opener, Moulin Rouge® that continues its run at the Cobb Energy Centre this weekend: two by Cynthia Bond Perry on ArtsCriticATL.com (a preview and review), Pierre Ruhe wrote a review for AJC, and there's another review from Creative Loafing by Andrew Alexander. Those are from the more "established" voices on dance in town--the critics if you will. It's interesting in light of our ongoing arts criticism discussion (see my earlier posts starting with March on the Emory Arts Criticism Symposium) that the Atlanta Ballet apparently sees all online coverage as the same. Their show-specific blog lists write-ups from Fashionado, and Atlanta Events under the heading "Critics Loved Moulin Rouge®". From what I can tell from how the bloggers mention dress rehearsal viewing and backstage access, and are posting the official promo shots on their blogs, the PR guys targeted bloggers right along with critics. And why not? Obviously they want as much coverage as they can get. But it's interesting that they're not at all separating the "critics" from the self-admitted neophytes. And a happy side-effect of the bloggers not being critics per se--they don't criticize! At least these two pretty much stick to gushing about how amazing everything was. Which is great, I'm totally stoked that folks who might not always be into it are going to see dance and loving it. No reason the world at large can't find out how much these folks appreciated the performance...but it's not really the same as a critical review. I personally get a much better idea of what the performance would be like to go see from the more critical reviews. So anything scholarly or "important" aside, what would I rather read? That makes the case for criticism for me.