dream seminar / drömseminarium is based on the words of contemporary Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, the music of composer Ellen Lindquist, and a libretto by Pat Diamond and Kathleen Flynn. It is a bilingual work in English and Swedish that creates an environment in which the spaces between the real and unreal elements of life are bridged, an important theme that appears throughout Tranströmer's work. The international cast includes two vocalists and twelve instrumentalists. As with all of Companion Star’s work, dream seminar has been developed collaboratively through improvisation. A fully staged production of dream seminar / drömseminarium is expected to premiere in 2012, and to be performed in the United States, Sweden, and Canada. Companion Star creates new opera and music theatre in a workshop-oriented system that discards traditional structures and dissolves conventional performance boundaries and hierarchies; this system yields a production in which every facet, from initiation to completion, is shaped by the ideas that arise from the collective work of the participants. Each project evolves and emerges naturally. www.dreamseminar.org