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Viab-le Construction

If robots can construct buildings, why shouldn’t they be able to improvise on the job, creating form as well as function? That’s the idea behind conceptual architect François Roche’s design for an automated construction worker known as a ‘viab’. “A viab would produce structures that are not set and specific, but impermanent and malleable – merely viable – made of a uniform, recyclable substance like adobe. The automaton’s output would have no innate design, boundaries, or service life. It would take whatever form was called for at the moment.”

Cleveland Orchestra Headed To Miami

Since the demise of the Florida Philharmonic two years ago, observers have been wondering just exactly who the under-construction Greater Miami Performing Arts Center is being built for. Now, an answer has emerged, courtesy of the chairman who presided over the Phil’s disbanding: the center will open in 2007 with a 3-week residency by the Cleveland Orchestra. It’s good news for South Florida music lovers, of course, but some former Philharmonic musicians are furious, suggesting that chairman Daniel Lewis, who has given $12 million to the Clevelanders over the years, allowed the Phil to die knowing that he could bring in a visiting orchestra more cheaply.

Jimmy Smith, 79

Pioneering jazz organist Jimmy Smith has died in Arizona. He “irreversibly placed the Hammond B-3 in the spotlight. Doubly blessed with a quicksilver technique and an unusually advanced harmonic imagination, he invented a brilliant new way of addressing the organ. Emerging as a musical force in the mid-1950s, Mr. Smith brought unprecedented virtuosity to the instrument, inviting comparisons to such bebop piano giants as Bud Powell and Art Tatum.”

Is British Ballet Really In Trouble With The Girls?

“Last week, former ballerina Dame Antoinette Sibley announced that the future of British ballet looked bleak, pointing to a lack of home-grown principals in British ballet companies: two out of 16 at the Royal Ballet, two out of 12 at English National Ballet and three out of 12 at Birmingham Royal Ballet. She also quoted what she called “shocking” figures from the Royal Academy of Dance showing a 67% drop-out rate of students at age 10-11. Is this really so surprising? After all, this is the age for dancers when the hard work really kicks in, and clothes and boys start to seem more appealing to many girls than pliés and pointe work. Not to mention that the stick-thin physique that dancers strive for is often thwarted by the development of womanly curves.”

Livent Investors Win $23.3 Million Settlement

Investors in Livent the former theatrical producer headed by Garth Drabinsky, have won a $23.3 million settlement against the company. The judgment “settles a six-year-old lawsuit filed by 200 investors who bought $125 million in corporate bonds offered in late 1997 by Livent, which had produced musicals including “Ragtime” and “Showboat” on Broadway in the 1990’s. Less than a year after issuing the bonds, however, Livent – a publicly held company – announced that it had discovered substantial accounting irregularities and declared bankruptcy.”

A Play Too Shocking? (Why? The Classics Did It)

Philip Ridley’s new play is so shocking his publisher refued to have anything to do with it. He wonders: “Why is it that it is fine for the classic plays to discuss – even show – these things, but people are outraged when contemporary playwrights do it? If you go to see King Lear, you see a man having his eyes pulled out; in Medea, a woman slaughters her own children. The recent revival of Iphigenia at the National was acclaimed for its relevance. But when you try to write about the world around us, people get upset. If I’d wrapped Mercury Fur up as a recently rediscovered Greek tragedy it would be seen as an interesting moral debate like Iphigenia, but because it is set on an east-London housing estate it is seen as being too dangerous to talk about. What does that say about the world we live in? What does it say about theatre today?”