German ballet chief dismissed after poo attack on critic

The Hanover State Opera said Thursday it had parted ways with its award-winning ballet director after he smeared dog poo on a critic's face in response to a bad review.

Marco Goecke's contract with the arts institution was ended with "immediate effect", the opera house said in a statement.

The ballet director caused outrage after he confronted journalist Wiebke Huester in the foyer at the premiere of his new show in Hanover on Saturday.

Incensed by a negative review of another of his works published by the critic on the same day in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Goecke threatened to bar the critic from the Hanover State Opera.

The choreographer subsequently "pulled a paper bag full of animal excrement out and smeared the contents on the face of our dance critic", the FAZ wrote after the incident.

The mess in the bag was made by the ballet director's loyal dachshund, Goecke told broadcaster NDR Tuesday, adding that the means he employed were "certainly not super".

Goecke was "a little shocked" by himself, but said critic Huester had also "thrown shit at me for years".

The ballet boss's actions "went against the state theatre's principles" and "hurt the reputation of the house", the institution's director Laura Berman said in the statement.

"I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like to be humiliated like that in public," Berman said, offering a further apology to Huester.

"Criticism is important for the creation and development of art," Berman said.

The FAZ had previously described the incident as "an attempt to intimidate our free, critical view of art".

Goecke, who was appointed as ballet director at the Hanover theatre in 2019, was the 2022 recipient of the German Dance Prize.

Despite the incident, the opera would keep Goecke's pieces in its repetoire and valued his work as a choreographer, Berman said.