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As it happens6:34 a.mThe ballet director did not like what this critic wrote. So he attacked her with dog poop
One night at the ballet turned into a nightmare for Wiebke Huester when the director confronted her during a break and smeared dog feces on her face.
Huester, the dance critic for Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, was crossing the foyer of the Hannover State Opera House on Friday, when ballet director Marco Goecke confronted him about a negative review he was about to write about his work.
What started as a “normal conversation” took a turn, he said, when Goecke suddenly slapped him with an open poop bag and “roughly, roughly” rubbed it in his face.
“It’s a nightmare. It’s very scary,” Huester said As it happens hosted by Nil Köksal. “I was so surprised, I was almost nervous. I screamed, then cried.”
Goecke has been suspended as head of the ballet. He began by apologizing for what he called “disrespectful behavior,” but also criticized Huester’s work and asked for “some understanding at least for the reasons why it happened.”
Huester said he has also filed a criminal complaint, and Goecke faces an investigation on suspicion of harm and slander.
Threatened to ban him from performances
During the break for Faith – Hope – Love Saturday, Huester said Geocke approached him and demanded to know what he was doing there. He said he told me he was going to review the performance.
That’s when he started talking about the latest review of his production Dutch Mountain in the Nederlands Dans Theater in The Hague, and said he should be banned from the opera house for what he wrote.
“Of course, you can’t exclude free press from a performance just because, in the past, you’ve received bad reviews,” he said.
“I think it’s childish for him to say something like that. So I decided, in order not to get angry … not to comment on it.”
The conversation continued for a while, he said, before taking his turn.
“At the moment I didn’t even see the movement he made with his arm. But he must have held up this dog poo bag out of his … pocket,” he said.
After driving it in his face, he said he threw the bag to the ground and stormed off. Only then did he realize what had happened.
“Everybody around me was shocked, and they were just, you know, looking at me, not knowing what to do, not knowing what was wrong with this strange woman,” he said. “And it’s really rude to say it, but I feel like an abandoned, neglected child. You know, I don’t know what to do.”
After an opera house press officer took her to a private bathroom to clean up, Huester said she recognized her and immediately called her husband, who is the editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
“I want this in the paper … so everybody knows what they’re doing,” he said. “It was very important to me at that time.”
Then he called the police, he said, and went home.
An apology was issued, but not accepted
In a statement posted on its website on Monday, the opera house immediately contacted Huester to apologize for the “unspeakable” violation of his “personal integrity”, and that Goecke’s “impulsive reaction” violated the rules of the theater and “caused great damage”. to his reputation.
The theater said it had suspended Goecke and banned him from the venue “until further notice,” and asked for an apology “before further measures are announced.”
On Tuesday, Goeke issued his own statement.
“I would like to sincerely apologize to all concerned, first and foremost to Ms. Huester, for my unacceptable behavior,” he said. “In retrospect, I clearly see that this was a despicable act in the heat of the moment and an overreaction.”
But he added that it’s time for the media to “rethink the damaging and damaging reporting that has harmed the entire cultural sector” and criticized Huester for what he said were “often bad reviews.”
“I apologize for the fact that I finally blew my top, but I also ask for a certain understanding at least for the reasons why this happened,” he said.
Huester said Goeke’s apology was not an apology.
“They are trying to create a legend that I have tortured them for 20 years with bad reviews … and this is not true,” he said.
“He tried to play it down by saying it was an impulsive act. Please believe me, it’s not because you don’t usually walk around the theater with an open bag of dog poop in your pocket, do you?”
Goecke had said that her old dachshund had defecated earlier, and had packed the mess into a bag and was planning to throw it out.
Stand by bad reviews
The ballet critic’s newspaper, and the German journalists’ association DJV, both condemned the attack, which they saw as an attack on press freedom.
Huester, meanwhile, stands by his latest review, which praises some of Goeke’s artistic choices, but in the end the show is “boring” and “disjointed.”
“I thought it was not a good piece, and I wrote it in an article,” he said.
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