Balkan Erotic Epic

Marina Abramovic (creator), Nabil Elderkin (film), Blenard Azizaj (choreography), Marko Nikodijevic (music)

Factory International, Berliner Festspiele, Gran Teatre del Liceu, Park Avenue Armory and WestK

Aviva Studios, Manchester

October 9-19, 2025; approx 4 hrs

(Over 18s only - checked by ID if under 25; all phones contained in locked pouches, no pictures allowed)

Marina Abramovic, front and centre in Balkan Erotic Epic. All pictures: Marco Anelli

Manchester loves Marina.

We loved her in The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic at the Manchester International Festival in 2011, and the Aviva Studios architects even had a future Abramovic epic in mind when they designed the building. Introducing the world premiere of Balkan Erotic Epic, Factory International artistic director and chief executive John McGrath said they had been involved in its planning and development for nearly four years...

And of course Marina loves Manchester right back.

Billed as “the most ambitious work of her career”, this is four hours of intense, multi-sensory immersion, both for the audience and the 70-strong cast. Grey and damp are key players, matching perfectly the weather outside.

This kind of atmosphere would normally sap energy, but we have to make an effort because stamina is definitely required here, of the audience as well as the actors, dancers and musicians. The pace is either exhausting or perfectly still – in itself a draining experience.

The piece is broken into 13 scenes on separate stages, starting with the funeral of the Yugoslavian president, Marshal Josep Tito, and working its way through expositions exploring desire, ritual and spirituality. Marina’s female line - mother and grandmother - is the magic thread that ties it together.

At the start there is general unease in the audience: where to look first? Is there an order? Should we be following some kind of invisible yellow brick road? But then we relax into it. Multi-sensory means not just using more than one sense, but also using one sense in more than one way. You see the scene you are looking at, but others play out just as importantly in your peripheral vision.

Throughout the piece the power, the spine, the momentum is overwhelmingly female. This is nowhere more evident than in the sight of thrusting male buttocks, projected and on a stage, relentlessly attempting to impregnate the ground to increase its fertility. They are silent, knowing their place and their function. The women, by contrast, turn their own private parts to the sky, screaming to scare away the rain and allow the crops to grow.

At one point, as I watched two tall, inflated goat-like figures through a window, (like a nightmare version of the puppets in The Lonely Goatherd from The Sound of Music), I was startled to discover myself standing next to the narrator, Maria Stamenkovic Herranz, clipboard in hand. Was she checking up on us, or on the performers? She was stern, glanced at me, checked her watch and moved on. I had been officially immersed...

There’s no getting past the fact, though, that four hours is a long time. The press and guest night crowd, which you would have been expected to be on the hardy side, started drifting away with half an hour still to go. 

So they will have missed Abramovic herself, at a table in the cafe. She sat motionless (of course) with a Mona Lisa-esque, all-embracing gaze. I looked away for a second and when I looked back she had disappeared.

It was actually quite tricky to know when things had wound up; the exit doors were flung open and the brass band in the cafe processed out, but Aleksandar Timotic continued to sing a haunting ballad at his table while a solitary couple danced in the deserted bar.  

I heard a quote this week from the broadcaster Kirsty Lang on the Dish podcast. “Good gravy is a sort of quasi-erotic thrill, isn’t it?” she said. It’s absolutely… ”, followed by a sort of gulp of joy and satisfaction.

I’m quite sure Marina would have approved. 

More info and tickets here