As the manager director of the Tabula Rasa Dance Theater, Amy Wonderful Collins has had a hand within the avant-garde costumes that shall be worn for the troupe’s upcoming “Oedipus Rex” performance.

She first became involved with the inclusive organization that explores difficult issues when artistic director Felipe Escalante founded it in 2018. On Friday, Collins will host a preview of the dance at The Ned hotel.

“Oedipus Rex” performances shall be available to the general public from Sept. 27 to Oct. 2 at Latest York Live Arts on West nineteenth Street. This contemporary take of the Sophocles’ play is ready in 2020 through the pandemic in a up to date, but barely futuristic nightclub. “It’s quite an ambitious production that’s daring and inventive and beautiful at the identical time. Felipe may be very focused on costumes and on the whole lot. He is incredibly visual and literary.” Collins said.

Because the self-described “fairy godmother” for Tabula Rasa Dance Theater, she helped Escalante start, with fundraising, outreach, costumes and graphic design. Choreography is the exception — “that is way beyond my canon. I wouldn’t even dare to assume anything to contribute on that front,” she said.

Collins confers with him in regards to the costumes and sometimes helps to develop ideas, but Escalante definitely has ideas of his own. For the 75-minute “Oedipus” production, performers can have about six costume changes, including some that only allow performers one or two beats of music to rework themselves. Coincidentally, mesh unitards and other transparent pieces, which were a recurring trend during Latest York Fashion Week’s latest run at Tory Burch and other shows, are essential for the dancers.

“There was a variety of transparency here in Latest York this past week and this concept of the male and the feminine body not being all that different,” Collins said, noting the preponderance of mesh, net or chiffon styles. “You’ll see a male with a visual chest or a female with a visual chest on the runway, or someone, who you didn’t know in the event that they were male or female. This point of ‘What are we hiding in life?’ and the way anatomy is gorgeous and is a component of life and getting dressed and undressed,” Collins said.

Performers can even wear “extraordinary painted jackets,” including repurposed ones like a Saint Laurent “Le Smoking” jacket, a Geoffrey Beene plastic raincoat, and an Isaac Mizrahi trench coat, amongst others. Designer-inspired costumes are in season. too, considering that the Latest York City Ballet will soon unveil a fall lineup that features costumes by Raf Simons, Giles Deacon and Alejandro Gómez Palomo.

The choice for dancers to sport mesh neck ruffs or collars with mesh unitards and strapless dresses sprang from a conversation that Collins had with Escalante in regards to the neck scrunchies that Beene designed, when hair scrunchies were all the fad. (In one other strange coincidence, Rommy Hunt Revson, the creator of the scrunchie, recently died.)

Escalante is counting on staff and colleagues in Mexico to make the more technical parts of the costumes. “That’s also a time thing, because he also knows the best way to sew,” she said.

Attendees on the upcoming performances will give you the chance to purchase “Oedipus Rex” tote bags which might be imprinted with a quote from Sophocles and have an Atlas-inspired image that substitutes a disco ball for the world that can cost “next-to-nothing,” Collins said. Upon seeing the brand, people query whether it was by Robert Mapplethorpe, comment on its provocativeness or presume it’s “just one other ancient sculpture,” she said. “It’s an interesting little Rorschach, but Felipe took that photograph of himself. He’s able to doing nearly the whole lot. A part of that’s because resources are limited as well.”

The hope is that the corporate will go on tour perhaps in the following 12 months or two. A robotic dog is featured within the production, and wearable lasers — bras, gloves, sunglasses and belts — periodically flash in numerous colours on the dancers. The laser bras include cone-like missile ones paying homage to those designed by Jean Paul Gaultier.

A photoshoot is planned with the dancers for As If magazine, and Collins has her own full dance card.

At all times working on the “International Best Dressed List” and contributing to Air Mail, she is now also the Latest York contributing editor for World of Interiors, since Hamish Bowles’ arrival on the helm. Collins said that sponsors are being lined up for an International Best Dressed List exhibition in development that would bow in Latest York in fall 2023. Collins can also be cooking up a Geoffrey Beene exhibition, culling from her own collection of the late designer’s work. And he or she shall be speaking with a filmmaker a couple of documentary about her friend Thom Browne that’s being explored.