Do You Wanna Do the Dog-do?
I Didn't, in Fact, But . . .
At first I thought you all wouldn't notice, because how could you notice something that I did not do?
What I did not do was comment on the headline in yesterday's Times regarding an event that "shocked the dance world."
You would, of course, have noticed the headline:
He Smeared
Feces on a Critic,
And Lost a Job
To be honest, I did consider commenting, late last night. But I concluded, "Naaaah" and went to bed.
Just now, however, it occurred to me that you may have expected me to comment. And therefore, you did notice.
Here is how I feel about that:
Have I ever commented on any other dance-world-shocking event? So what was it about this event that caused you to rush to Take Another Little Piece of My Heart Now in search of my take on it?
"WOW! Big dance-world flap! Wonder what old Roy will have to say!" That was your reaction?
Let me ask you this:
Could it be that choreographer Marco Goecke, who smeared the critic in question, had a point when he complained, as reported in the Times, that "newspaper coverage of the incident had focussed only on the dog feces, whereas he wanted to start a debate about what should be allowed in arts criticism"?
I'll grant you, one aspect of the story did set me to musing. It was something said by a spokesperson for the Hanover State Ballet. (The job Goecke lost was as that German organization's ballet director.) Said the spokesperson, "I never imagined he'd ever do anything remotely like this."
Okay, what Goecke did do (to go into sufficient detail) was respond to a certain critic’s negative reviews of his work by smearing dog-do on the critic's face when their paths crossed at the Hanover Opera House. Goecke (according to a more extended account in The Guardian) happened to have the feces with him, in a plastic bag, because his dachshund, Gustav, has been very sick.
So here is what I mused:
What might a ballet director do that would be “remotely like” that?
Jumping up and down and hollering (in German, presumably), "You bad, bad poopy-britches critic!"?
Flinging himself to the floor, writhing and sobbing, "What a mind full of filth must you have, to describe my work as less than transcendant?"
My musing progressed no further than that. So I moved on.
Can’t say the same for Goecke, who told the Times, "I'm still not free of this anger."
The Guardian noted that Gustav, the dachshund, inspired Goecke's 2019 Paris Opera production titled "Dogs Sleep." That must have been nice.
I can think of a few critics who should have the dog doo smeared on their tongues.
As noted at The Baffler:
Marco Goecke, the director of the Hanover State Opera’s ballet company, smeared dog feces in the face of his critic, who had written of his production of In the Dutch Mountains, “One alternates between a state of feeling insane and being killed by boredom.” The author of the feculence in question was Goecke’s dachshund, Gustav, himself a paragon of high culture who has notably dined with Princess Caroline of Monaco, so, as befits an exchange between such vaunted cultural commissars, this isn’t just any everyday hoi polloi turd we’re talking about—it’s the good shit. The episode invokes the history of artists who responded in kind to their naysayers, such as the time Joan Didion lit a bag of ordure outside Pauline Kael’s brownstone, rang the doorbell, and ran away cackling; Stephen King’s habit of prank calling Harold Bloom; and when Stanley Kubrick force-fed Gene Shalit his own pet lobster, David Pincher.
He just happened to have a bag full of dog poop with him when he went to the opera house. No trash cans along the way, I guess.