Marina Abramović is sitting in a rehearsal studio in Manchester, tucking into lamb chops and ajvar. The latter is a red pepper and garlic relish, hailing from the Balkans. “It’s homemade,” she says, given to her by a friend. Her Irish assistant, Declan, who cooked the lamb, bustles around her amicably. Abramović is amicable too, offering me the chops and lathering ajvar on to a rice cake for me to taste (delicious).
It is a disarmingly cosy welcome from the high priestess of performance art. Then again, this might be the quiet before the storm. Her new show, Balkan Erotic Epic, a four-hour performance conceived and directed by Abramović and commissioned by Factory International, may ruffle some feathers. More than 70 actors, dancers and local performers will feature in 13 scenes that enact ancient ritual, rites and folklore from Slavic tradition. Many contain nudity and act out explicit eroticism that arises out of the tales collected from Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, Turkey, Serbia, and more.
