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Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic. The Stage Version

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Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic. The Stage Version

Performing Arts Season 2026/2027

With Balkan Erotic Epic, performance icon Marina Abramović returns to her roots – transforming Balkan myths into a rapturous ritual of body, shame and life force.

Marina Abramović, Women Massaging Breasts aus der Serie Balkan Erotic Epic, C-Print, 2005, Serbia – Frauen mit schwarzen Kopftüchern und knielangen Röcken massieren ihre nackten Brüste. Dabei schauen sie in den Himmel.

Marina Abramović, Women Massaging Breasts aus der Serie Balkan Erotic Epic, C-Print, 2005, Serbia – Frauen mit schwarzen Kopftüchern und knielangen Röcken massieren ihre nackten Brüste. Dabei schauen sie in den Himmel.

© Marina Abramović. Courtesy der Marina Abramović Archives

An intense invocation of the erotic as a source of energy, insight and community.

With Balkan Erotic Epic, Marina Abramović presents one of the most radical and at the same time sensuous works of her career. The great pioneer of performance art returns to her roots – unleashing a new, collective energy out of it. Inspired by the erotic rituals and folk myths of the Balkans, her homeland, the artist creates a polyphonic hymn to life force: raw, archaic, overwhelming.

Balkan Erotic Epic is more than a performance – it is a conjuring. Building on her 2005 video work of the same name, Abramović unfolds a powerful new work exploring female energy, shame, desire, and the relationship between body and history. Premiered as an immersive performance in Manchester in October 2025, the Performing Arts Season will present the stage version of Balkan Erotic Epic in 2026 for the first time in Germany.

Singers, dancers and musicians bring to life a sequence of scenes oscillating between celebration, prayer and liberation. Bodies enact a feverish ritual, writhing on the ground in a desperate call for fertility. Women massage their bare breasts to awaken the earth, or bare themselves under the open sky to ward off storms. Here, eroticism appears not as allure but as primal force, a language beyond shame, morality and control.

As in earlier key works – the physically extreme cleansing ritual Balkan Baroque (1997) or the silent encounter The Artist is Present (2010) – Abramović probes the boundaries between body, consciousness and audience. But where she once confronted her audience with a quiet, singular presence, here she unfolds a collective physical experience of a new dimension and complexity.

Balkan Erotic Epic connects to the spiritual and political power of Abramović’s oeuvre while ushering it into a new phase: more communal, sensuous and ritualistic. She returns to the myths and tensions of her homeland, where eroticism, pain and belief intersect. It is a return to origins – and simultaneously a departure toward a future in which the erotic becomes a source of insight, healing and power.

Born in Belgrade in 1946, Marina Abramović is a central figure in performance art. Since the 1970s, she has rigorously explored the limits of body, pain, endurance and presence. In her early works, she put her own life and body at risk (Rhythm 0, 1974). Together with the artist Ulay, she developed intense duo performances exploring intimacy, connection and separation. One of her most recognised works worldwide is The Artist is Present, in which she sat silently across from visitors at MoMA for hours – an iconic moment of still encounter and radical presence.

Artistic Team

Balkan Erotic Epic created by Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović – Artist, Director, Concept, Design

Georgine Maria-Magdalena Balk – Co-Director

Blenard Azizaj – Direction of the Choreography

Billy Zhao – Durational Performance Director

Nabil Elderkin – Film Director

Marko Nikodijević – Composer

Luka Kozlovački – Composer / Sound Designer

Urs Schönebaum – Lighting Designer

Anna Schöttl – Set Designer

Roksanda Ilinčić – Costume Designer

Sonia Alcón– Animation Director

Fredrik Nordbeck – Animation Co-Director

Marco Anelli – Photography

Svetlana Spajić – Creative Consultant / Singer

Aleksandar Timotić – Creative Consultant / Singer

Dragana Jovanović – Creative Consultant / Singer / Band Leader

Elke Luyten – Performance Artist / Co-Creator of the Role

Maria Stamenković Herranz – Performance Artist / Co-Creator of the Role

Rowan Schratzberger – Stager, Assistant Choreographer

Elena Cattardico – Assistant Choreographer

Georg Veit – Associate Lighting Designer

Helene Schönebaum – Assistant Set Designer

Tigger Blaize – Intimacy Coordinator

Shanti Freed – Costume Collaboration and Supervisor

Rafi Gokay Wol – Creative Consultant / Executive Producer for Marina Abramović 

Yasemin Kandemiroğlu – Creative Consultant / Producer for Marina Abramović

Complete cast of Balkan Erotic Epic

Commissioned by Berliner Festspiele; Factory International, Manchester; Gran Teatre del Liceu; Park Avenue Armory; Ruhrtriennale; Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg; and WestK Performing Arts, Hong Kong

Produced by Factory International, Manchester

Berliner Festspiele, celebrating their 75th birthday in 2026, present Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic. The Stage Version is a highlight of this anniversary year’s programme. The artist’s exhibition of the same name, Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition, will open in spring.

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