Symphonie des Verfalls is a butoh piece for an enclosed space and an audience that comes and goes. Eight minutes of contained decay. A room of the Kunsthaus Rhenania becomes the theatre of a fall that makes no noise — or that makes so much noise it can no longer be heard.

The title invokes the grandest musical form of the Western tradition and empties it of grandeur. There is no symphony. There are remains. There is the cry of the body that no one hears because it has become too familiar. The eyes, the fingers, the knees, the elbows — each joint a small private apocalypse.

The piece moves in the tension between decay as an intimate process and decay as a condition of the era. The body is symptom and archive at once.

ROOM SERVICE

About Room Service: A scenic project founded in Cologne (Germany) in 2004 by Gregor Weber. Each edition takes over the Kunsthaus Rhenania with 10–12 simultaneous 8-minute performances in different rooms. The audience moves through the building choosing which doors to open. In recent editions, Matilde J. Ciria directs the ni.butoh workshop held before the event, whose participants join as performers.
Each piece is performed 48 times during the event.
bodyincrisis.com/room-service