German ballet director suspended after 'smearing dog poop' on critic's face over a bad review

Marco Goecke has been suspended by the Hanover State Opera. (Image: @marcogoecke/Instagram)

The chief ballet director of a German opera house has been suspended after he flung dog faeces at a journalist’s face reportedly over a bad review.

Ballet director and choreographer Marco Goecke, 50, has also been slapped with a house ban at the Hanover State Opera in northern Germany – apart from the immediate suspension.

Dance critic Wiebke Hüster, who writes for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, (FAZ) was at the premiere of the ballet "Glaube-Liebe-Hoffnung" on Saturday at the opera house where Goecke was one of the choreographers.

During a break, Goecke approached Hüster and threatened to ban her after her negative review of his latest show "In the Dutch Mountains" didn’t go down well with him. He blamed the critic for ticket subscription cancellations of the show and reportedly became increasingly violent during the interaction.

Suddenly, he pulled out a paper bag with animal feces and threw it at Hüster. He then made his exit through the crowd.

Hüster’s newspaper FAZ, in a report, said it considered "the humiliating act to be an attempt to intimidate our free, critical view of art, in addition to the offense of bodily harm. Goecke's crossing of boundaries reveals the disturbed relationship between an artist and criticism."

Hüster, in her scathing review of Goecke’s “In the Dutch Mountains”, had written that it was "alternately driven mad and killed by boredom."

The Hanover State Opera said the management had suspended Goecke and banned him from the premises until further notice. In a statement on its website, the opera house wrote: "We are appalled by what has happened and very much regret that the escalation has occurred. Immediately after the incident, we contacted the journalist and apologized to her personally."

"With his impulsive reaction to the journalist, Marco Goecke violated all the rules of conduct of the Hanover State Opera and thus unsettled the audience, the employees of the house and the general public to the extreme."