DANZTSB Bank Arena
Wellington
19 September 2025
Executive Creative Director: Brian Burke
Show Director: Malia Johnston
Music Director: Eden Mulholland
Production Designer: Robin Rawstorne
Video Design: Artificial Imagination
Lighting Designer: Tom Edwards
Sound Designer: Bart Barkman
Costume Designer: Gabrielle Stevenson
Aerial Coach & Choreographer: Jenny Ritchie
Co-Choreographers: Kayla Paige Middleton-Echave, Holly Newsome
Reviewed by Brigitte Knight
2025 marks the 35th World of WearableArt’s awards show and its 20th year in Wellington, an extravaganza of design, music, dance, and creativity that illuminates the capital’s waterfront for three weeks every year. The opening Friday is WOW’s Awards Night, adding an extra level of excitement as designers receive awards live onstage immediately after the show. Audiences for WOW invigorate the city as it emerges from a drab winter, and the support and aroha for this uniquely Kiwi show is evident in every curated outfit, from the chic to the avante garde.
Drift, Katherine Bertram, New Zealand. Winner, Neon Section
The 2025 production sees the return of the creative team of Show Director Malia Johnston and Executive Creative Director Brian Burke, who have realised a spectacular and original production in 2025 WOW Show: RISE. The loosely interpreted theme includes a wash of red and orange entrance and venue and lighting, and phoenix-inspired imagery, however, does not feature particularly strongly in the stage show itself. The WOW showcase combines two separate but overlapping elements; the designs (designers, art works, competition coordinators, judging, and finalist selection in Nelson) and the production (the artistic team, production staff, and performers who create the stadium show in Wellington). Having sold WOW in 2002 (to New Zealand company STILL), founders Dame Suzie Moncrieff and Heather Palmer remain involved as WOW Ambassadors, and Dame Suzie Moncrieff’s special award recognises the original WOW spirit of ingenuity and creativity.
The WOW design competition is made up of six categories; three recurring sections (Aotearoa, Avant-Garde, and Open), and three sections unique to the year (in 2025 these are Air, Neon, and Myths & Legends. 2025 WOW Show: Rise treats these categories as separate worlds, giving each section its own thematic feeling and staging approach. The categories are less visually distinctive than in previous years, with Robin Rawstorne’s production design moving away from physical set towards bold digital graphics, and Eden Mulholland’s soundtrack featuring classic pop song arrangements, samples, and lyric rewrites making the experience more homogenous and less eclectic. Staging and transitions between sections are generally swift and seamless, with just a couple of breaks in the flow moving into the final two categories on opening night. An endearing Street Sweeper character performed by Daniel Nodder runs a thread of physical comedy through the show, and his stage presence and impact build steadily during the evening. There is room for tighter synchronicity between sound effects, lighting, and physical timing here that will tighten during the season and enable increasingly effective comic delivery.
2025 WOW Show: RISE features five young vocalists, Riiki Reid, Tusekah, Lila Crichton, RV Quijano, and MacKenzie Htay, whose backgrounds span opera, pop, soul, and rock n roll. The singers open the show and create effective focal points throughout the performance, with WOW’s most majestic and electrifying moments delivered in the final Myths and Legends section by Lila Crichton in magnificent full operatic voice – an absolute showstopper. Alongside the singers are a cast of dancers, circus, and trampoline artists, choreographed into varied and everchanging groupings to enliven the stage, create context and flavour for the categories, and activate the full height of the TSB arena.
The World of WearableArt’s awards show is a valued contract employer of dancers in New Zealand, and each year the dancers consistently provide the basis of the performance design as they are onstage for much of the show. In 2025 it is great to see the artists of the New Zealand Dance Company alongside the freelance dancers. Although some of the dance work is muted by competing colour palettes or being layered behind other performers, impactful choreography for the dancers is achieved during the openings of the Neon and Air sections, which expand beyond the stage perimeter with simple yet bold visual effect. Movement material is commercial in style, with significant use of isolations and static floorwork. Bold costumes by Gabrielle Stevenson and effective use of the stage revolve make the hip hop influenced Neon section choreography memorable. Under the direction of Aerial Coach and Choreographer Jenny Ritchie, the trampoline artists add a sweetly surrealist and anti-gravity touch, and the four circus artists are positively sublime in their breathtaking and exquisitely technically refined aerial work. Exposed transitions in and out of aerial equipment that proved challenging in previous years are completely resolved in 2025 WOW Show: RISE, with the aerialists sustaining focus and creating rich dramatic tension with every appearance.
The heart of 2025 WOW Show: Rise is of course the wearable art designs, and these are as wildly creative, innovative, charismatic and entrancing as ever. Given the plethora of visual effects competing for audience attention it could be helpful for a section of the digital screens to be allocated to introducing the six design categories and sharing the competing finalist work’s titles, designers, and country of origin or key idea. In 2025, 120 finalist designers showcasing 85 imaginative and vivid works compete for six category and a dozen special awards, and runners up are also awarded for each title (purchasing a WOW programme is worthwhile to keep track of the enormous selection of garments, and to follow along with the awards and their recipients). Taking out both the 2025 Supreme WOW Award and the Myths & Legends section award is United States designers Dawn Mostow and Ben Gould’s delicate and refined dual entry Tsukumogami, which imagines “…the secret life of objects…Century-old porcelain vases, imbued with spirit, begin breathing...” This reviewer’s personal favourite, the sophisticated, sculptural, and subtly poignant Worn Landscape by New Zealand designer Cushla O’Connell wins the Aotearoa section award and the Wētā Workshop Outstanding Design Special Award.
2025 WOW Show: RISE audiences can look forward to an immersive and spectacular arena show, with different emphasis based on where one is sitting, but thoroughly entertaining regardless of the perspective. The show runs for a three-week season until Sunday 5 October.
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