Marco Goecke. PHOTO: Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Images
The head of a major German ballet company is being investigated by police after allegedly wiping dog poo on a critic's face after she gave him a negative review. Marco Goecke, the director of Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, is said to to have confronted Wiebke Hüster, Frankfurter Allgemeine's ballet critic, in the interval of his latest show on Sunday night at Hannover Opera House.It was claimed he was furious about Hüster's review of his production of In the Dutch Mountain with the Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague, which was published on that Saturday. She said watching the performance was like “being killed by boredom”.Frankfurter Allgemeine and Hüster claim Goecke became worked up and accused her of launching personal attacks on artists, before pulling a bag of dog poo out of his pocket and rubbing it in her face.“He rubbed the dog poo from the open side of the bag into my face,” Hüster said.“When I realised what he was doing I screamed,” she added.Hanover State Opera’s ballet company has suspended Goecke. The opera house has confirmed the incident and Goecke has been barred from entering the building. Hüster said that after rubbing the poo on her face Goecke stormed out, and nobody stopped him. She left immediately to find the nearest police station and file a criminal complaint. The offending review Hüster wrote said that the feeling of watching Goecke's show meant “one alternates between a state of feeling insane and being killed by boredom” and added being in the audience felt like being "in a permanent state of retirement”.Goecke has not yet commented.
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