Vega (with Pell Ensemble)

A mixed-media installation realised in collaboration with Pell Ensemble, a London-based contemporary dance company, in 2015. The title refers to Vega, a star in the constellation Lyra associated in Japanese tradition with Orihime, the weaver of the Tanabata festival who is permitted to meet her partner Hikoboshi (the herdsman star, Altair) once a year across the Milky Way. The Tanabata legend has been treated in [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) since the Edo period, often through depictions of the celestial pair, the river of stars, and the wishes-on-bamboo customs associated with the festival. As a mixed-media installation made for performance, the work likely combines woodblock-printed elements—[washi](/glossary/washi) panels, suspended printed forms, or projected imagery derived from print plates—with stage lighting and the ensemble's choreographed movement. The collaboration sits within a strand of Imada's practice that uses Japanese visual vocabulary as a structural element of live performance, extending mokuhanga beyond the static print and into time-based work.