A newspaper critic in Germany offended a ballet director with a negative review, so naturally, the director found her and smeared dog poop in her face.
Talk about a crappy review!
The Hannover State Opera House apologized for the incident and immediately suspended the director, Marco Goecke, while the Hannover police investigate him. Goecke is also barred from the opera house.
Wiebke Hüster, the ballet critic of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), called the production "boring" and "disjointed."
Hüster described it as "a state of feeling insane and being killed by boredom" in watching the performance and compared viewing it to passively watching the sea from "behind a glass, left to sit in the warm, looking at a winter beach, like in a permanent state of retirement."
According to FAZ:
Apparently provoked by her review of his The Hague ballet evening "In the Dutch Mountains", he initially threatened her with being "banned from the house" and accused her of being responsible for canceling subscriptions in Hanover. Getting more and more upset, Goecke finally got physical: He pulled out a paper bag with animal feces and smacked the face of our dance critic with the contents. After that, he was able to go his own way unhindered through the crowded foyer.
Police investigations into this outrageous incident are ongoing and criminal charges have been filed immediately. But we, the feuilleton of this newspaper, consider the humiliating act beyond the fact of physical harm as an attempt to intimidate our free, critical art appreciation. Goecke's crossing of borders reveals the disturbed relationship between an artist and criticism.
When Hüster realized what Goecke had done, she screamed – a totally fair reaction.
An opera house's press office member helped clean herself up, then drove to the police station to report the ballet director.
"Immediately after the episode, we sought to contact the journalist and to apologize to her personally and also in public," the opera house's artistic director, Laura Berman, said.
She described the opera house as an "open location of respectful cooperation and exchange," adding that the management would "explore the relevant steps relating to labor law with respect to ballet director Marco Goecke, jointly confer and then act in this internal staff matter."
The German journalists'" association DJV denounced the attack. The union's regional head in Lower Saxony state, Frank Rieger, said:
An artist must tolerate criticism, even if it seems exaggerated. Whoever reacts violently to criticism is unacceptable. The attack on the journalist is also an attack on press freedom.
