A choreographic landscape where the characters speak and the body listens
In 2023, Jefta van Dinther enjoyed great success with the spectacular production *Remachine*. On February 4, 2026, he returns to the Norrlandsoperan in a slightly smaller-scale production, as compelling as ever and featuring his unmistakable style and aesthetic. Mercury Rising premieres in Berlin on November 21, 2025.
Jefta van Dinther has become known for his distinctive aesthetics where illusion and reality are often woven together and the boundaries between them are slowly shifted. Through a conscious play with perception, he often creates dystopian sinkholes that challenge our senses and open up new, unexpected worlds.
In his new work Mercury Rising , the complexity of language and human communication is scrutinized. The performance, created in collaboration with the participating dancers Dawn Jani Birley, Rita Mazza and Lukas Malkowski, exposes a terrain of ancient as well as future non-linear languages. Together, they navigate through a landscape of communication, signs, agency and physicality.
Here, the human body becomes an unsecured discursive stage—a place where meaning is created, dissolved, and reshaped through movement. While inviting the audience to interpret an inexhaustible array of signs, the work explores the fluid nature of interpretation and ultimately frees us from the need for the literal or the explanatory.
By weaving together multiple sign languages and being designed for both deaf and hearing audiences, *Mercury Rising* tackles the complexity of human communication in an ever-changing world. Ultimately, what we share is not certainty—but the impossibility of understanding, and the longing for connection despite everything.
Norrlandsoperan is 60% owned by Region Västerbotten and 40% by the City of Umeå. We receive grants from the Swedish Arts Council.
Many thanks to all our donors, sponsors, and partners.