Performing Wednesday night at Queens Theater in the Park as part of the Latino Cultural Festival, Diquis Tiquis, formed in 1983, merges dance, theater and mime to create tableaus rich with absurdist humor that tend to spotlight the anguish of a complex interior life.
"We often buy books by the yard to fill walls of bookcases," saidMary Foley, an interior designer in Bethel, "but we also create tableaus, like a still life, on tabletops and counters and shelves: a book, a silver bowl, a heavy round glass votive or a tiny vase of flowers.
Soon, the other dancers joined her, and together they created tableaux, like old-fashioned portrait photographs.
They recall creating tableaux vivants of art masterpieces (Millet's "The Gleaners" was a favorite).
The digitally created tableaux range from evocations of natural forms that only exist in imagination to pure abstraction.
They had a really eclectic cast of people, all responding to a stream of popular music hits, but creating tableaux vivants relating to the ironies of the lyrics in these songs.
In the production of his The Brigand, Planché created tableaux vivants of three recent paintings by Charles Eastlake: An Italian Brigand Chief Reposing, The Wife of a Brigand Chief Watching the Result of a Battle, and The Dying Brigand.
He creates tableaus in which is own unclothed body, often in multiple exposure, acts the parts of religious scenes.
He said he created "Tableau Vert" by mixing blues and greens to echo the colors of grass underwater.
