German ballet director "smeared dog faeces on critic's face" after bad review

The director of a leading German ballet company has been suspended from his post and is being investigated by police after allegedly smearing a critic’s face with his dog’s excrement at the premiere of his new show after she described one of his productions as “boring” and “disjointed”.

Marco Goecke, the head of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, has also been barred from the opera house, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday afternoon, after he confronted Wiebke Hüster, the ballet critic of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), in the interval of his latest show on Sunday night.

He attacked her verbally before producing a bag of dog faeces from his pocket and rubbing the contents in her face, the FAZ and the critic said.

The newspaper said in a statement that Goecke had expressed his fury over Hüster’s review, published in the FAZ on Saturday, of his production In the Dutch Mountain with the Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/13/german-ballet-director-smeared-poo-face-of-critic-who-wrote-negative-review-hanover-state-opera