JEFTA VAN DINTHER

Mercury Rising emerges from a phenomenological excavation of language. Tthe performance charts both ancient and future non-linear languages, navigating the terrain between communication, gesture, agency, and physicality. This creation positions the body as a volatile site of discourse—a place where meaning is made, unmade, and transformed through movement. While inviting its audience to decipher an abundance of signs, the work also explores the slippery nature of interpretation and ultimately releases us from the need for the literal or the explanatory. Incorporating multiple sign languages, and created for all audiences—including Deaf and hearing audiences—Mercury Rising ad­dresses the complexity of human communication on the brink of a paradigm shift. What we share, in the end, is not certainty—but the impossibility of full understanding, and the urge to connect nonetheless.

Jefta van Dinther (SE/DE) is a choreographer and dancer. His work is characterized by a rigorous physical ap­proach and always implies a staged research of movement itself. The moving body is the core of his practice but belongs to and interacts with a body of light, sound and materials. Central in his work is the question of what it means to be human, examined through its relation to society, community and environment but also to other forms of life such as the animal and other non-human entities. Jefta’s performances reach out into metaphysical or otherworldly realms and deal with notions of illusion, the visible and the invisible, synaesthesia, darkness, labour, sex, the uncanny, affect, voice and image.

Choreography Jefta van Dinther / Created and performed by Rita Mazza, Dawn Jani Birley, Lukas Malkowski / Costumes and stage Cristina Nyffeler / Lighting design Jonatan Winbo / Sound design David Kiers  / Backdrop surface Gonçalo Sena / Dramaturgy Gabriel Smeets / Artistic advice Maja Zimmermann / Technical direction Andrea Parolin and Fabian Bleisch / Light Fabian Bleisch / Sound Andrea Parolin / Manage­ment Sven Neumann / Distribution Sarah De Ganck, ART HAPPENS / Production Management Uta Engel and Romy Hansford-Gerber / Financial management transmissions GmbH (DE) and Interim kultur AB (SE)
Production Jefta van Dinther / Coproduction Norrlandsoperan Umeå, Cndc – Angers (Accueil Studio), Dansens Hus Stockholm, Dansnät Sverige, HAU Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, PACT Zollverein Essen / Funded by Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and Fonds Darstellende Künste
In 2025 Jefta van Dinther was funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and Swedish Arts Council
 The company acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.