I’ve heard the com­plaints; World of Wear­able Arts – WOW is for women of a cer­tain age and is far too expens­ive. I’d not been to the show before so I could­n’t con­firm or deny, but oh wow are those people wrong. To start with WOW to me was two exper­i­ences seam­less mel­ded togeth­er, and also a mark­ing of Spring in our city.

First the com­pet­i­tion itself (which is what you think WOW is solely about but you’d be wrong), where some truly amaz­ing gar­ments go up against each oth­er in eight Sec­tions, with a Supreme Win­ner being named best of the best. For 2014 the Bran­cott Estate Supreme WOW Award went to ‘Poly Nation’ by Kate MacK­en­zie of Hawkes Bay.

I’m a fan of vin­tage and second hand, but Kate’s manip­u­la­tion of leath­er and card­board suit­cases to cre­ate two wear­able and func­tion­al gar­ments along with a cycle wheel-powered Waka, is fant­ast­ic­al. That someone even thinks to do that, is one thing, that they then do it and its fin­ish­ing is impec­cable (it does­n’t come across as a mess of hot glue or bits of string barely hold­ing things togeth­er) feels like crazy geni­us ter­rit­ory. In both the con­struc­tion of the gar­ment and in the mes­sage it con­veyed par­tic­u­lar to post-colo­ni­al NZ and our myri­ads of tour­ists, this is Art. Not some­thing pretty, not some­thing kooky or fun but actu­al art. Art that fits on a body and can with­stand being worn night after night for 15 shows.

That’s just the win­ner; the oth­er 166 entries work with tex­tiles and trans­form mater­i­als into a tex­tile in a myri­ad of ways. Could you ima­gine a bra – a func­tion­al bra – made out of skate­boards? Not me, but yes it’s pos­sible. ‘Re-Decked’ by Sebasti­an Den­ize, New Zea­l­and won the ever pop­u­lar Bizarre Bra Sec­tion which returned after a break in 2013.

Re-Decked_Sebastian Denize_New Zealand. Photo credit: World of WearableArtTM Ltd
Re-Decked_Se­basti­an Denize_New Zea­l­and. Photo cred­it: World of Wear­ableArtTM Ltd

The second exper­i­ence is a whole oth­er thing. A fant­ast­ic­al show fea­tur­ing 42 of NZ’s best and emer­ging mod­ern dan­cers per­form­ing to cho­reo­graphy by Malia John­ston (WOW® Artist­ic Dir­ect­or and Prin­cip­al Cho­reo­graph­er since 2002) and lead­ing New Zea­l­and dan­cer and cho­reo­graph­er Tanemahuta Gray. It’s very infre­quently that NZ dan­cers are giv­en such an expans­ive stage to per­form on, so it’s a real treat see­ing how they leap and move across the stage. Add to that eight aer­i­al­ists and 28 spe­cial per­formers, which includes an amaz­ing feat of no hands, upside down feet-only arch­ery. Finally add to the mix some Shaol­in Monks and NZ’s Strike ensemble and you have a stage show big­ger than any­thing Broad­way could ever offer in one night.

I loved how WOW magic­ally mixed those two exper­i­ences to cre­ate their won­der­ful world of gar­ment com­pet­i­tion and stage show. It’s like noth­ing I’ve seen before and as the lights came up all I could think was “again, again!’