Big just got bigger

It’s Evento time again at Feilding High School and Carly Thomas noticed that after more than two decades it’s still getting bigger.

Twenty-one years is a long time to maintain forward motion. But since its inception the Evento: Wearable Arts Awards have rolled onwards and outwards, gaining in momentum, size and reputation. Feilding High School’s biggest fundraiser has become huge and with that, expectations have grown. It’s a weight.

Every year is bigger than the last, with a different theme, new categories, an epic stage and students who have seen what’s gone before them. And every year, a step up is built.

But the students are not daunted by the heights. A performance team tasked with making an opening sequence that will create the hold-your-breath moment and set the stage for the amazing designs is excited and full of energy.

Feilding High School year 12 student Shahanna Tahere explains how the show will open and the theme that will knit the four categories together.

‘‘We are basing things on the Rangitane story of Okatia, the spirit and how he came from the totara tree and carved the Manawatu Gorge on his journey to the ocean. It’s about us and it’s a modern twist on what you would see. You are seeing and hearing it and it’s all in front of you and the audience should go ‘wow’.’’

This is Shahanna’s first year being involved in Evento. She is a strong presence in Feilding High School’s kapa haka group and because of the theme she felt drawn to getting involved.

‘‘I see it more from a Maori perspective and it is actually quite amazing to be part of this, because you don’t always see these stories centre stage or on the front page and it’s being told how it’s meant to be told. I’m really happy to be here and I wish I had started Evento earlier now.’’

Shahanna performs a karanga. She becomes Moana calling to Okatia to make his way to the sea and the sequence sets a tone of mystery, a place where fantastical designs come to life.

The categories are wide-ranging this year – Green, Asian Inspired, Everyday Superhero and Twentyone. Green is the section where the audience will get to see last year’s overall winner Kaitlyn Johnston step out again. It was a no-brainer for the year 12 student on which category to choose – ‘‘green is my favourite colour’’.

‘‘I started off thinking about a nature, goddess kind of a theme. But that’s what everybody was probably thinking of too, so then I have put my own special twist on it. I went up to Hastings to see my grandma who is crazy about wearable arts. She loves it and we bounced ideas off each other.’’

Art is Kaitlyn’s real passion. She takes all three art subjects at Feilding High School and much of her creation has been made on the sewing machine she won at last year’s Evento.

"My design is very textilesbased, so there has been a lot of sewing. I’ve used rope and all sorts of things and I spent a month painting, working at it when I could. There will be a big reveal in there, a bit of a surprise.’’

Immersing the audience in a different ‘‘unseen’’ world is a big part of Evento and an extra layer has been added this year. Music teacher at the high school, Kaine Harington has composed and arranged original music with the help of Warren Warbrick – a player, collector and maker of traditional Maori instruments.

‘‘He was demonstrating the tone and sound of each instrument and improvising short melodies. We recorded all of that in the school hall so we could get a nice reverberant sound. After that initial recording session I sat and listened to the roughly 30 minutes of sounds that we captured and listened for little melodic ideas that I could sample for use in the Evento opening soundtrack.’’

He then got to play around with it all – looping and layering on audio software until he achieved ‘‘short ideas’’ that could be attached to each part of the Okatia story.

‘‘‘Green is my favourite colour. I started off thinking about a nature, goddess kind of a theme.’’ Shahanna Tahere

‘‘I was determined to not use any synths or sounds other than Warren’s performances because I wanted to create the sound world exclusively from traditional instruments. Both for creative reasons and out of respect for the korero purakau.’’

Taking the work-in-progress music into rehearsal to see how it fitted with the students was an important part of the process and William Greenway, a performance group member, says it was a great way to work.

‘‘It meant that we had a lot of input and it is interesting to see how it all comes together.’’

Process is a thing that Feilding High School year 12 twins Jacqui and Lauren Strange are interested in. Jacqui got involved last year because her sister wanted to do it and she knew ‘‘she would be too shy to do it on her own’’.

‘‘And I loved it, so we are doing it again this year. We love creating, but we are shy, so this is a way of getting out there, making a character that is your own.’’

Jacqui says her strengths lie more in maths and science than arts, so she is interested in the design and production elements that Evento can offer. They are entered in the Asian Inspired category because they are both a bit obsessed by dragons and different cultures.

‘‘Our design is a warrior samurai morphed with a dragon. We are using fabric and vinyl in reds, blacks, gold and coppers – that kind of a look.’’

It’s the sort of thing that longstanding Evento organiser Amanda Street likes to hear, that the awards are creating a platform for students, enhancing what they do at school in a creative way. She says one of the coolest things about her involvement is seeing students who have come through school and Evento and are now helping out behind the scenes.

‘‘It’s amazing how things have turned out, really.’’

Street’s daughter Holly lives in Europe now but still helps out with the design. Holly’s brother Josh gets pulled in, Teigan Boycetowler is a past student who is still hands-on and Jasmine Shadbolt will return as a judge six years from being a winning student.

‘‘It has been going for so long and it has just kept growing. It has become such a major thing. The students involved this year weren’t even born when it started all those years ago and it just keeps evolving. It has to.’’

●➤ Evento: Wearable Arts Awards 2017 will be held at Feilding’s Manfeild on July 29. For more information go to: www.evento.org.nz