Margaret Jenkins is a choreographer,
teacher, and mentor to many young artists as well as a designer of unique
community-based dance projects. Jenkins began her early training in San
Francisco. In the sixties, she moved to New York to study at Juilliard,
continued her training at UCLA and returned to New York to dance in the
companies of Jack Moore, Viola Farber, Judy Dunn, James Cunningham, Gus
Solomons and Twyla Tharp’s original company with Sara Rudner. In addition,
Jenkins was a member of the faculty of the Merce Cunningham Studio and often
restaged his works for companies in Europe and the United States.??
In 1970 Jenkins returned to San Francisco and formed her own company.
She also opened one of the West Coast's first studio-performing spaces at 2005
Bryant Street, a school for the training of professional modern dancers. This
venue quickly became the center for local and traveling companies to show their
work. Viola Farber and Merce Cunningham were frequent guests, and dozens of
young choreographers had the chance to experiment and take risks. This San
Francisco rehearsal and performance space also became the “stage” for Jenkins
and her Company.??
From 1980 until 1993, Jenkins continued to manage her repertory-based
company, administer her curriculum, and provide a performance space for local
and touring companies. In 1993, she restructured her organization to become a
project’s-based company, in order to focus all of her artistic, economic, and
administrative resources into the making of new work.??
In addition to the over seventy-five works she has made for her Company,
Jenkins' choreographic work has been commissioned by the New Dance Ensemble in
Minneapolis, the Repertory Dance Theatre in Salt Lake City, the Oakland Ballet,
the Cullberg Ballet of Sweden and Ginko, a modern dance company in Tokyo,
Japan. She has received commissions from the National Dance Project, the Yerba
Buena Center for the Arts, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Arizona
State University, the University of Arizona, Montclair University and Columbia
College in Chicago, as well as being a recipient of a National Dance Residency
Project grant. She has set work on various college and university dance
departments: CSU Hayward Dance Company through the National College
Choreography Initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts, UC Santa Cruz,
Mills College, and three times for UC Berkeley. Jenkins’ career has also
embraced a commitment to training the professional dancer. Over the last
thirty-five years, she has taught at major universities and colleges in this
country and abroad.??
In spring of 2003 Jenkins celebrated the 30th anniversary of her Company
with a unique season of performances and exhibitions at Fort Mason’s Herbst
Pavilion, a 30,000-square-foot warehouse in San Francisco, never before used
for dance for which she was presented with a special Isadora Duncan Dance
Award. As an organizer and enthusiast for dance, Jenkins facilitated a showcase
for presenters to be introduced to the work of Swedish choreographers in
Stockholm, some of whom subsequently came to San Francisco and other venues in
the U.S. She served on the steering committee for the 2002 International
Women's Day Conference in San Francisco, and as Artistic Consultant to
DanceAbout, a dance facility at the UC Berkeley Extension in San Francisco that
has since closed. She was a founding member of the Bay Area Dance Coalition and
of Dance/USA, serving on its first Board of Directors. She currently sits on
the board of directors for the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and remains an
active participant in panels across the United States.?
She is committed to an art of inquiry and to advance the health and
future of the field of dance through a variety of projects. She conceived The
National Dance Labs (NDL) a “product-driven,” as opposed to “market-driven,”
model for creativity in the performing arts. In 2004 Jenkins and her Company
launched a new program, Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME). Now in
its 6th year in the San Francisco Bay Area and having recently concluded its
first in Southern California, the notion behind this artist mentorship program
is to foster creative exchange and long-term relationships between emerging and
established choreographers, and to create an arena for continuing education for
choreography outside of the academic environment. Coinciding with the
commencement of her choreographer mentorship program, CHIME, she opened her new
studio, the Margaret Jenkins Dance Lab, in the South of Market area of San
Francisco.?
Jenkins has also helped to structure and implement Choreographers in
Action (CIA) a unique gathering of local choreographers who, in combination and
collaboration, posit solutions to the myriad of issues that surround the
working artist. In addition, the Center for Creative Research based in New York
is a collection of ten senior choreographers who have come together under the
leadership of Sam Miller and Dana Whitco to create research residencies within
the university. Jenkins is one of its founding members.??
Highlights of Jenkins’ activities have included a residency in Kolkata,
India (2003) to create a new dance at the Ananda Shankar Center for Performing
Arts, the premiere of a new site-specific work, Danger Orange (2004) in
San Francisco, a three-week teaching residency in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and
Beijing, China (2004), and the premiere of running with the land (2005)
at the opening of the new de Young Museum in the Barbro Osher Sculpture Garden,
commissioned by the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation. In November of 2005,
Jenkins and five members of her Company were invited to Kochi, India to
participate in a four-week rehearsal and performance residency to develop
source material for the evening-length piece, A Slipping Glimpse, which
premiered in May of 2006 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In 2007,
Jenkins and her Company performed in a poetry and dance festival in Tokyo,
Japan, conducted a five-city domestic tour of A Slipping Glimpse, and
presented the initial segment of Other Suns, the first part of new trilogy
of work inspired by her 2004 workshops in China. In 2008, Jenkins and her
company traveled to Guangzhou, China for a five-week rehearsal and performance
residency with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company to further develop Other
Suns. The complete Other Suns trilogy had its world premiere on
September 24, 2009 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco,
followed by a highly successful four-week tour in the U.S. 2010 is already rich
with activities for the expansion of the Ms. Jenkins’ CHIME program, a new work
with multi-media artist Naomie Kremer and a return to China.?
For her unique artistic vision, Jenkins has received numerous
commissions and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Irvine Fellowship
in Dance, the San Francisco Arts Commission Award of Honor, three Isadora
Duncan Awards (Izzies), and the Bernard Osher Cultural Award for her
outstanding contributions to the arts community in San Francisco and the Bay
Area. April 24, 2003 was declared “Margaret Jenkins Day” by San Francisco Mayor
Willie Brown. On that day she also received a Governor’s Commendation from
Governor Gray Davis. For the 75th anniversary of the San Francisco Ballet in
2008, Margaret Jenkins was commissioned to create Thread, a new work for
which long-time collaborator, Paul Dresher, created a new musical score. ?
“The dancers/collaborators, artistic collaborators and administrative
support--a host or remarkable people, have made it possible for me to do my
work with energy, commitment and honesty. This unique intersection of people is
the foundation, from which all risks are taken, questions posed and new
directions formed.”
Maggie Allesee
