It was my first time at WOW. I knew that I could expect a spec­tacle along with fant­ast­ic wear­able art but I was unpre­pared for just how delighted I’d be. The sheer exuber­ance of the per­formers, the out­land­ish designs, and the joy of the win­ning design­ers made me clap my hands in child­ish glee sev­er­al times dur­ing the show. I also got the giggles at sev­er­al points prov­ing to myself that no mat­ter how soph­ist­ic­ated I pre­tend I am, a tongue-in-cheek dance routine will grab me every time.

Please note: there will be spoil­ers about the show in this post. If you’re going and don’t want to know – look away now!

The Supreme Award win­ner (and win­ner of the Open sec­tion) was Delight Of Light by Yuru Ma & Mengy­ue Wu of China. It’s a piece inspired by archi­tec­tur­al forms. The trans­lu­cent plastic com­pon­ents are slot­ted togeth­er, cre­at­ing inter­est­ing spaces and lay­ers with­in the piece. Very com­plex. It’s almost like look­ing at a xray. The head-piece swept out behind the mod­el who said the whole out­fit was sur­pris­ingly com­fort­able to wear.

 

Both of the design­ers were involved in the design that won the Avant Garde Sec­tion and was run­ner-up to the supreme award. (An amaz­ing achieve­ment con­sid­er­ing that both are still at uni­ver­sity.)  This time Mengy­ue Wu was the lead design­er and Yuru Ma the sup­port­er. It’s called Revive and is inspired by the shape of a sol­dier­’s armour. The piece was par­tic­u­larly dra­mat­ic onstage. In the media room after the show it looked shiny and slick, and was quite intim­id­at­ing. Beau­ti­ful.

The first sec­tion of the show was the chil­dren’s sec­tion. This year the theme was ‘Con­ceal and Reveal’. The win­ner was a scary little num­ber called Spider Feast by Chan See Lik & Chan Yuet Foon from Hong Kong. A poor little but­ter­fly is trapped in a spider­’s web, with the gigant­ic spider hov­er­ing over her death throes. The spider inflates and deflates, nicely echo­ing the way spiders appear unex­pec­tedly in rooms. The sup­port­ing per­form­ance was a chil­dren’s play room com­plete with boxes and dolls (small and lar­ger than life.)

The South Pacific sec­tion star­ted with a group of war­ri­ors bat­tling with the forces of evil. Some clev­er pro­jec­tion and crisp move­ment gave it a video-game vibe which I liked very much. This year’s win­ner was Mar­quise Rawahi by Beatrice Carlson from Auck­land. It was a stately and eleg­ant design.

 The Illu­min­a­tion sec­tion win­ner was Shanach­ie For Lost Birds Stu­dio by Jo Drys­dall from Christ­ch­urch. A simple design and very effect­ive on stage with the skull-like heads and wav­ing threads. In the back ground dan­cers waved flex­ible rods. After the gar­ments had fin­ished parad­ing, the dan­cers were even more frent­ic in their efforts. All while whoop­ing and cheer­ing. Very rave-like.

The Cre­at­ive Excel­lence theme this year was “Visu­al Sym­phony”. This sec­tion of the show has a steam­punk vibe with the musi­cians in out­rageous dresses and the dan­cers kit­ted out in suits of vary­ing com­plete­ness. They’d scurry after the mod­els with micro­phones so the sound the gar­ment made could be incor­por­ated into the music. Gareth Farr was the con­duct­or (and com­poser) resplen­dent in a cor­set and long skirt. The win­ning design was Shaker Suit by Erica Gray from Aus­tralia.

The final sec­tion was the Bizarre Bra. This is where the show became out­rageous. My notes for this sec­tion con­tain a num­ber of !! and 🙂 . It had a com­ic-book sci-fi theme with rock­et ships, dan­ger­ous female ali­ens and bold hero­ic men. So crazy. So awe­some. The mod­els were dan­cing around the stage along with the dan­cers. Anim­als were the win­ner on the night with the win­ner and the run­ner up both incor­por­at­ing anim­als into their design. The win­ner was Epi­centre Divas by Claire Third from Christ­ch­urch.

Thanks to all the design­ers, cast, and crew for a super night out. This year the enter­tain­ment was inter­est­ing and com­pel­ling but not so much as to dis­tract from the gar­ments. Dame Suzie Mon­crieff said they cre­ate the theatre and then insert the wear­able art into it. Based on com­ments about last year’s show, I think the bal­ance was about right this year. WOW was over at the Hong Kong Arts Fest­iv­al earli­er this year which has influ­enced the num­ber of over­seas entries.

(There was a dra­mat­ic moment dur­ing the awards cere­mony when one of the mod­els mis­judged where the stage went and fell into one of the open sec­tions. A col­lect­ive gasp went up from the audi­ence and the presenters rushed to see if she was okay. She was mov­ing very slowly but seemed to be fine. WOW is not just fun and laughter!)