Mercury Rising
Jefta van Dinther
The body is a fleeting place of discourse: it is a place where we create, unravel, and transform meaning via movement. How do our bodies speak, how do we decipher an abundance of signs? And what role does language play in this? Mercury Rising explores the slippery nature of interpretation, and ultimately liberates us from the necessity of the literal, the explanatory.
The performance examines language in a direct, phenomenological manner. With makers and performers Dawn Jani Birley, Rita Mazza, and Lukas Malkowski, Jefta van Dinther maps out both ancient and future non-linear languages. Together, they navigate a terrain on which communication, gestures, agency, and corporeality can intersect.
Incorporating multiple sign languages and created for all audiences, including both deaf and hearing spectators, the work addresses the complexity of human communication on the brink of a paradigm shift. What we ultimately share is not certainty, but the impossibility of fully understanding each other, and the urge to connect nonetheless.
• Jefta van Dinther (Sweden/Germany) is a choreographer and dancer. His work is characterized by a rigorous, physical approach and always implies a staged investigation of movement itself. The moving body forms the core of his practice, but belongs to and interacts with a body of light, sound, and materials. Central to his work is the question: what does it mean to be human? He explores this through its relationship to society, community, and environment, but also to other forms of life, such as animal and other non-human entities. Jefta's performances reach out into metaphysical or otherworldly spheres and address concepts such as illusion, the visible and the invisible, synesthesia, 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) | produced by Jefta van Dinther | co-production 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
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This performance contains strobelights and loud music with deep bass.
