Jefta van Dinther

Ten dancers are in a bright white space with high ceilings, like an old church. On the left, a standing performer watches five others sitting and kneeling on the floor. They are looking at four more: two standing to their right, one in front of the group with their back to the camera, and another in the background facing forward.

Jefta van Dinther

Unearth

Play Studios, Halle B

June 15 & 16, 2026

In “Unearth”, Jefta van Dinther brings together ten dancers in a bold and stripped-down choreography of body and voice. In this durational performance, Jefta breaks down our impetus to feel anew - time and again. Centered around our human drive to revive and yearning to relive, “Unearth” lays bare the body’s boundless mental and physical resourcefulness. The audience is summoned into the intensity of repetition and to linger in the sweetness of introspection. “Unearth” digs into the body as material, whilst exposing both social and spiritual constructs of kinship, purpose and mortality.

Jefta van Dinther 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. 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: Brittanie Brown, Juan Pablo Camara, emeka ene, Leah Katz, Gyung Moo Kim, Leah Marojeviç, Dana Pajarillaga, Manon Parent, Roger Sala Reyner, Sarah Stanley, Thomas Zamolo and Jefta van Dinther
Costume: Cristina Nyffeler
Voice coach: Doreen Kutzke
Assistant choreographer: Thomas Zamolo
Artistic advice: Gabriel Smeets and Maja Zimmermann
Photo & film: Jubal Battisti
Production by Jefta van Dinther
Management: Sven Neumann
Distribution: Sarah De Ganck, ART HAPPENS
Production management: Uta Engel and Romy Hansford-Gerber
Tour Management: Tammo Walter
Financial Management: transmissions GmbH (DE) and Interim kultur AB (SE)
Co-production: Norrlandsoperan Umeå
Funded by: the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion
In 2022 Jefta van Dinther was funded by TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund with the support of the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and Swedish Arts Council