The curious incident of the dog, the Hanover ballet and the everyday sexism we face as female arts critics | Arifa Akbar

There are more women in cultural criticism now in Germany and Britain, but we also face more aggression. Is this progress?Remember the international outrage over a lurid incident involving a female dance critic, a male choreographer and a deposit of his pet dachshund’s excrement? In February 2023 the German choreographer Marco Goecke cornered Wiebke Hüster in the foyer of the Hanover State Opera during the interval of a show. Goecke, who was then artistic director of the venue, brought out a bag of dog poo from his pocket and pushed it into the journalist’s face. The reason? Hüster had written a negative review of his Netherlands-based show, In the Dutch Mountains, which had appeared in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Faz) on the night of his hundekot attack.The incident sparked column inches of conversation in Germany on critical culture, with a ripple effect further afield: in the Netherlands, theatre critics condemned it as an act of violence against freedom of expression; in the US, the American Theatre Critics Association did the same, with a blaze of accompanying newspaper headlines across Europe.Arifa Akbar is the Guardian’s chief theatre critic. She presents No Criticism, a two-part documentary broadcast on BBC Radio 4, on 12 and 19 AugustDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

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