A German ballet director received a suspension after he allegedly smeared dog feces across a journalist’s face, the Associated Press reported Monday.
The suspension from the Hannover State Opera House came after the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German daily, reported on the encounter between ballet director Marco Goecke and dance critic Wiebke Huester, according to AP.
Goecke reportedly approached Huester and expressed frustration over her recent review of another of his productions before threatening to ban her from attending his performances, the AP reported. He also blamed the critic for season ticket cancellations in Hannover.
The newspaper said that Goecke then smeared dog feces from a paper bag across her face before exiting through a crowded foyer, according to the AP. German news agency Deutsche-Presse Agentur reported that Huester subsequently filed a criminal complaint.
German ballet director Marco Goecke has been suspended and is facing a police investigation after allegations that he smeared dog feces on the face of a critic who wrote a negative review of his production, “In the Dutch Mountains.” pic.twitter.com/Tqex7tRMv3
— DW Culture (@dw_culture) February 14, 2023
The Hannover State Opera House issued an apology and noted that Goecke jeopardized the “personal integrity” of Huester “in an unspeakable way,” AP reported. The ballet director will have to “comprehensively” apologize “before further steps are announced.”
Goecke responded to the incident in an interview with public broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk, saying that there was a limit to his tolerance of his work being “soiled for years,” according to the AP.(RELATED: NYT Art Critic Spends 700 Words Trying To Find A Polite Way To Say Hunter Biden’s Art Sucks)
Frank Rieger of Deutscher Journalisten-Verband, an association of German journalists, said artists “must tolerate criticism, even if it seems exaggerated,” AP reported.