Review: CreationFest People's Choice night

Ellis Carrington at CreationFest. PHOTO: SUPPLIED

CreationFest
Blue Baths
Rotorua Daily Post People's Choice Awards night

Rotorua locals have always impressed with their talent in the wearable creations field. But CreationFest has set a whole new standard.

The event, which finishes tonight at the Blue Baths, features not only the work of talented local designers using creative, bizarre and unique materials, but an impressive line-up of dancers, singers and musicians.

The avant garde nature of the designers' creations is more than matched by the song and dance numbers performed by heavily made-up and bewigged youngsters.

Image 1 of 3: 060714sp2 CreationFest prejudging. From left, Ishanee Illangasinghe, 16, Sally Haslam, 15, and Ashleigh Nairn, 15. 06 July 2014 Daily Post photograph by Stephen Parker

The combination, held together by amusing MC Cohen Holloway and magician/dancer Lola (and he looks very comfortable in towering heels) made for a magical night.

In fact, the format, with entrants' categories interspersed with musical numbers, was the real winner on the night.

The wearable creations showed incredible innovation and creativity, wowing the crowd.

The amount of work that must have gone into designing and creating them is staggering.
And not all the talent was on stage.

Entries in the short film category were shown on screen. These were highly entertaining, particularly the People's Choice Award winner The Tour which was laugh-out-loud funny.

But the night truly belonged to the young singers and dancers. Their performances throughout the evening captivated the audience, and a solo by young singer Ellis Carrington was amazing.

Two other numbers in particular stood out for this reviewer: a spooky group number about a carousel - in which a lone singer is joined one at a time by others until it turns into a rousing chorus on a haunted merry-go-round, and a duet cover of John Legend's All of Me by Sam Aoke-Austin and Aroha Te Whau, accompanied by a beautiful dance featuring Tamzin Coffin and Saul Newport, which brought some in the audience to tears.

What a night - I hadn't been so entertained in a long time.