A Choreographic Landscape Where Signs Speak and the Body Listens Jefta van Dinther is known for his distinctive aesthetic, where illusion and reality are often intertwined and the boundaries between them slowly shift. Through a deliberate play with perception, he frequently creates dystopian voids that challenge our senses and open up new, unexpected worlds. In his new work, Mercury Rising, the complexity of language and human communication is closely examined. Created in collaboration with dancers Dawn Jani Birley, Rita Mazza, and Lukas Malkowski, the performance exposes a terrain of both ancient and future non-linear languages. Together, they navigate a landscape of communication, signs, agency, and corporeality. Here, the human body becomes an unsecured discursive stage — a space where meaning is created, dissolved, and reshaped through movement. While the audience is invited to interpret an inexhaustible number of signs, the work explores the fluid nature of interpretation and ultimately frees us from the need for literal or explanatory meaning. By weaving together multiple sign languages and being designed for both deaf and hearing audiences, Mercury Rising addresses the complexity of human communication in a changing world. In the end, what we share is not certainty — but the impossibility of understanding, and the longing for connection despite everything.