Ballet Director Causes Farcical Fiasco by Rubbing Dog Feces on Newspaper Critic's Face

People say that in order to grow and improve in your craft, one must be able to take feedback and criticism and then put it to positive use. When we are criticized, we gain a new perspective on the little things we might have missed before and it can motivate us to try a different approach to our work. But ballet director Marco Goecke was not having any of it. When a German newspaper critic wrote a not-so-positive review of a production, Goecke decided to express his response to the criticism by smearing animal feces on her face.

The Hannover State Opera House apologized for the incident on Monday and immediately suspended ballet director Goecke for his inappropriate actions. According to HuffPost, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported that "a furious Goecke approached its dance critic named Wiebke Huester during the interval of a premiere at Hannover's opera house on Saturday." He asked what she was doing there, even though it is said that the duo did not know each other personally.

The German newspaper said that Goecke felt provoked by the recent review the critic wrote of a production Goecke staged in the Dutch seat of government, The Hague. He also threatened to ban her from the ballet and accused her of being responsible for people canceling season tickets to shows in Hannover. Then Goecke did the unthinkable. He pulled out a paper bag with animal feces and smeared it on her face before he walked away through a packed theater foyer.

Upon realizing that she had been smeared with dog feces, Huester filed a criminal complaint against Goecke, per the German news outlet. Goecke was given the next few days to apologize "comprehensively" and explain himself to theater management "before further steps are initiated." But according to The Guardian, the director failed to apologize, saying he was responding to decades of "annihilatory criticism."

"I am also a human who has never done anything like that, and in this respect, I am of course a bit shocked at myself," said Goecke, and called the critic's reaction "aggressive, arrogant, and condescending" in an NDR interview. Later, he admitted to smearing her face with his dog's feces. "My old dachshund had done his business in his bag, which sometimes happens at the age he is, and I had just packed the poo into a bag and had wanted to throw it away outside," he admitted.

Goecke's dog, Gustav is known to accompany his master everywhere. He inspired Goecke's 2019 production with the Paris Opera, Dogs Sleep. But now the poor dog's feces is responsible for all the fiasco. 

Huester denies having always written negative reviews of Goecke's productions. "I told him 'no, that's not true, there are productions of yours that I've cherished a lot. It's not true,'" she said.

Describing the horrible moment, she said: "All of a sudden he pulled this bag from his pocket. With the open side of the bag, he rubbed the dog excrement into my face. When I felt what he had done, I screamed. I was in panic." The next moments are hazy to Huester as she was in shock and disbelief. Although she had tried catching hold of the director, someone from the theatre had led Goecke into a separate room.

The now-suspended Goecke won the German Dance Award in 2022 and he is now under investigation by the police on charges of criminal assault and is prohibited to enter the Hanover State Opera House.