Ballet director smears dog poop on critic’s face after bad review

A German ballet director took a dirty approach to telling a critics that her review of his work stinks.

Marco Goecke was suspended after he smeared dog poop on the face of Wiebke Huester, the dance critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, after she panned Goecke’s show “In The Dutch Mountains.”

Huester described watching the show at the Hague as being “alternately driven mad and killed by boredom” (link in German).

During an intermission for a different show’s premiere at Hannover’s opera house on Saturday, Goecke threatened to ban Huester from the building. He then pulled out a paper bag with dog feces inside and smeared its contents on her face before he running away.

Huester told German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur she’s filed a criminal complaint against Goecke.

“When I realized what happened, I screamed, I panicked … I can assure you that it was not an impulsive act — he had planned this. I consider it an act against the freedom of [the] press,” Huester told BBC News.

German journalists’ association DJV denounced the attack.

Hanover State Opera said Goecke was suspended and banned from the opera house until further notice. The theater said it would take additional steps soon if he did not apologize and explain himself to the theater’s management. It added that Huester’s “personal integrity was blatantly violated.”

In an interview with public broadcaster NDR, Goecke said he was “a bit shocked at” his actions but said it was commensurate with having his work “soiled for years” by Huester’s review.

Goecke became the director at the Hanover Theater in 2019 and won the 2022 German Dance Prize.