Naked Lunch

Naked Lunch is a collaboration between the international dance company Club Guy & Roni, VocaalLAB and Slagwerk Den Haag. In this particular piece, three SDH percussionists and the dancers are joined by actors and three vocalists. 

Choreographers Guy Weizman and Roni Haver drew their inspiration for Naked Lunch from the notorious book of the same name by the American writer William Burroughs. Visitors are drawn into a world on the interface of illusion and reality. The audience finds itself in a place where dreams become reality and hope springs eternal, but their greatest fears loom on the horizon as well. Yannis Kyriakides composed the music for this production, and Oscar van Woensel wrote the lyrics. 

The numerous voices and characters in the book Naked Lunch provided Kyriakides with his inspiration. “I then reduced the voices to sounds, lyrics, expression and communicative gestures. The music was created by dissecting and rearranging the original text. The newly evolved vocal and rhythmic structures tell a new story, echoing the eccentric, recalcitrant voice of Naked Lunch.” It starts with the surface noise of a gramophone, after which the hallucinogenic, disturbing music of Naked Lunch slowly unfolds. The three percussionists create dry sounds using stones, record players and wooden boxes. They control and manipulate the three vocalists with electronic effects, while snippets of pop music from the 1950s are occasionally heard. These snippets are trying to tell you that everything will be all right in the end - in vain.