After months sewing souvenir coasters, moulding truck inner tubes and tweaking hundreds of ear buds, World of WearableArt artists finally got to see their creations on stage.

The Wellington design and materials challenge held its dress rehearsal on Wednesday night, ahead of opening night on Thursday and awards night on Friday.

From a literal flying start, the audience at the preview show, which raises money for the Neonatal Trust charity, gasped and cheered, as much for the dance numbers as the 107 outfits.

They were moved by the gravitas of Philippa Stichbury’s On Reflection, were unsettled by the eerily moving For Fear of Being Hunted by a Victoria University team and cheered for the sheer outrageousness of Jeff Thomson’s Tinker.

Entrants were clearly inspired by this year’s new category, Architecture in honour of the late Sir Ian Athfield, making tough work for the three WOW judges, designer Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, Elam lecturer Greer Twiss and WOW founder Dame Suzie Moncrieff.

With the new prize sponsored by Cirque du Soleil, WOW had a constant taste of circus, with a double trapeze act at the end of the show drawing almost as much emotion from the audience as the tribute to Athfield.

Circus costume head Benoit Mathieu, who would help decide the winner of the new Performance Art Costume Award, said he was looking for quality and beauty but also a design that transformed the body’s morphology. “Its biomechanical performance is as important as its craftsmanship.”

He was tight-lipped about costumes, but said he was struck by the men’s section performers. “The music and the choreography was quite powerful. [The dancers and models] were playing off each other, feeding each other.”

Arts Creative Excellence: Kaleidoscope by Tess Tavener Hanks, University of Technolgy Sydney, Australia.

Many designers were also at the preview. Some were catching what might be a one-off glimpse of their creation in action, artist Susan Holmes said.

“That’s the only time you see your art. It’s the weirdest of art forms because – and it shows in a different way in an exhibition because it’s static – on stage is when you look at what you’ve made. And you only have 30 seconds.”