Charlotte is a Local Democracy Reporter covering Oldham Council for the Manchester Evening News in partnership with the BBC. She reports on all things community and council related.
There are giant pink penises erupting from the ground like old oaks. In front of me, seven women in traditional Balkan dresses scream and bare their vaginas to the sky.
Behind me, stony-faced men hump a field of AstroTurf.
I'd like to say this is not what I expected from my Tuesday evening. But I was at a show called the 'Balkan Erotic Epic' by fabled performance artist Marina Abramovic. The event poster features a row of women in headscarves sorrowfully clutching their exposed boobs.
I had been warned.
But the show's world premier, staged at Factory International's Aviva Studios, started tamely enough. The only hint that something was afoot as impeccably dressed art lovers streamed into the venue's foyer for the opening night were the lockable little fabric pouches handed to each guest upon arrival.
These were to lock away our phones - with photography strictly forbidden.
Then Abramovic appeared to welcome the visitors, introducing her show with the words: "We Balkan people are crazy."
The idea for this show started 20 years ago, the Serbian artist explained, but she had never found the right time or place to bring it to life.
"Then I found Manchester," she went on. "This is a great place to do an opening show with something big, ambitious, daring. Because Manchester people are crazy too."
And then suddenly the show was starting right there in the foyer.
A brass band marched through the crowd playing a funeral march. Visitors followed in procession up the main event space.
The room was dark. Stepping in, I immediately sank deep into a black shag carpet. A singer in a mighty black gown - Svetlana Spajic - performed a powerful lamentation song, while another woman - acting as Abramovic's mother Danica - stood in an impossibly long military salute.
We had arrived at the funeral of Josip Broz Tito, the leader of Communist Yugoslavia. Of course.
Spotlights drew us further into the room, which was dotted with several brutalistic architectural structures - a graveyard, a church, a type of bar and restaurant called a Kafana.
Each of these scenes carried different performance pieces referencing Balkan traditions. In one, a heavily pregnant bride bopped happily to Balkan pop songs in a shallow bath as another poured milk over her. In another, a row of solemn men and women in mesmerising white outfits perform an energetic circle dance known as Kolo.
In still another, naked men and women moved in slow motion as they made out with skeletons, gyrating against tomb stones and rubbing their breasts.
At first the crowds wandered around stiffly - making a concerted effort to compose their faces into expressions of utter seriousness, while they avoided eye contact so fervently with the rest of the room, they kept bumping into each other.
I'm not saying I was above all that. When I first rounded the corner onto a space where the seven women were performing a ritual known as 'scaring away the rain' (by showing the gods their poonanies), I found myself suddenly hyperaware of the fact that I have limbs - and legs that could pivot me to an exit.
But gradually the trippy atmosphere of the whole space started to sink in. Phrases of mourning songs mingling with the brass band ditties, throat singing and sporadic screaming, a faintly herbal smell wafted through the air.
Each of the performances, whether featuring nudity or not, is linked to an ancient ritual - for love, marriage, death, good crops, controlling the weather. Abramovic said she wanted her show to be 'far away from pornography'. And it's true the acting and dancing in the show was not 'sexy' or fetishized in that way. They seemed powerful, ritualistic, spiritual.
And physically exhausting. The whole show lasts four hours. Some of the routines repeat the same demanding steps over and over, while others follow a narrative arc or circle in a type of semi-nude ballet.
Sometimes this made it hard to know where to stand, what order to watch things in - but also thrilling to move around the room, catching different parts of the action. Rotating round the room driven by perpetual fomo.
It wasn't all serious (the giant willies made sure of that). At the Kafana, where identical Balkan grannies were perched morosely in front of shot glasses of rakia, spontaneous parties broke out.
Amidst groups of mourners from the nearby 'Black Wedding' - where a deceased young man was being married off before his burial - the band picked up a catchy tune and talented opera singer Aleksander Timotic could be seen dancing on tables and showering the buskers in cash.
But it was all absolutely captivating.
I'd never been to a live performance art show before and honestly, I came out with more questions than when I went in.
Yet I spent hours so completely hypnotised by the strange, titillating and visually striking goings on in that dark space, I completely forgot about my phone, locked away in its little fabric pouch.
The remaining tickets carry a hefty price tag of more than £80 (with all of the £10 tickets already snapped up). But for art lovers who would like to see one of the world's most famous artists turn other people's bodies into a mesmerising mandala of erotic rituals, it may well be worth it.