Dhe ballet director Goecke would like to apologize. He doesn’t apologize for his disgusting act, he thinks he can do it himself. He also does not write to those affected, he does it through the media and sincerely calls his self-apology. She is so sincere that he immediately sends new allegations to the dance critic who he pressed dog feces in the face of in the foyer of the Hanover State Opera. He calls it an “overreaction” because he thinks the critic provoked him. He couldn’t accept everything in silence.
What “everything”? The dance critic of this feuilleton, Wiebke Hüster, has reviewed a total of nine works by Mr. Goecke since 2006, who now acts as if she had followed him with malicious intent at every step. He shouldn’t exaggerate so much. During this time, Goecke has brought more than seventy choreographies to the stage. Our critic enthusiastically praised two of them, both in 2021. On the other hand, she was critical seven times, getting bored in his pieces and not finding his tendency to make the dancers tremble interesting. Where was the “insult”, the “denigration”, the “bullying”, the “damage to business” that Goecke is now talking about in his apology? What, he thinks, is the task of criticism? He doesn’t say that she doesn’t just raise or lower her thumb as she pleases, that is, she doesn’t say that arguments for the aesthetic judgments are given in criticism.
These arguments can then be shared or not, the audience can examine them and find them valid or erroneous. But to what extent can one speak of an insult if someone is bored in the theater or feels they are being made fun of and writes it down? To what extent does “bullying” exist just because he finds his pieces better than the critic? She didn’t even know him until last Saturday. And what deals, to use Goecke’s word, did the allegedly injured party miss? About eighty ballets in twenty-three years, every two months one or two choreographers of the year, one German Dance Award – business seems to be going well, there is no lack of applause. But that didn’t impress our critic.
In fact, Goecke’s allegations are about something else. Marco Goecke inflates the bugbear of a critic who is personally fixated on him, has a negative attitude throughout (except twice) and persecutes him (every two years), so that the public can show understanding for him despite his disgusting attack of dog excrement. He tells us the artist legend of the sensitive creator who was hunted down by insensitive criticism until his collar burst. His press release is aimed at that and not at the request for an apology. In addition to the fact that he sincerely wants to apologize to Wiebke Hüster, it doesn’t fit well to make ever larger and more baseless accusations against her at the same time. We therefore take the liberty of regarding his sincerity as played, and not even played well.