Margaret Jenkins

Margaret Jenkins (Artistic Director) is a choreographer, dance teacher, mentor to many young artists, and designer of unique community-based dance projects. Jenkins began her early training in San Francisco with Lenore and Judy Job, Welland Lathrop, and Gloria Unti. In the sixties, she moved to New York to study at the Juilliard School of Music with Jose Limon and Martha Graham. She 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. For about ten years, Jenkins toured extensively with Twyla Tharp and Sara Rudner, the Viola Farber Dance Company, and performed on a weekly basis at New York's Dance Theater Workshop (DTW). In addition, Jenkins was a member of the faculty of the Merce Cunningham Studio for twelve years, where she acted as Mr. Cunningham's special assistant, teaching and restaging 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 sold her one-half interest in the New Performance Gallery and restructured her organization in order to focus all of her artistic, economic, and administrative resources into the making of new work.

In addition to the over 70 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 and Ginko, a modern dance company in Tokyo, Japan. She has also been commissioned by the National Dance Project, the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, Arizona State University, the University of Arizona, a long-term relationship with Columbia College in Chicago as well as being a recipient of a National Dance Residency Project grant. In 2002 she set a new work on the CSU Hayward Dance Company through the National College Choreography Initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts and in 2004 she will make a new work for the Mills College Dance Department. 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. This retrospective season included an elaborate installation of sets, costumes and visual design elements spanning her career, along with repertory favorites from the last 30 years. She also premiered her newest work, Fractured Fictions. On April 26, 2004 the MJDC was presented with a special Isadora Duncan Award for her 30th anniversary season.

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. to show their work. She served on the steering committee for the 2002 International Women's Day Conference in San Francisco, and served as Artistic Consultant to DanceAbout, the recently-closed dance facility at the UC Berkeley Extension in San Francisco. She was a founding member of the Bay Area Dance Coalition and of Dance/USA, serving on its first Board of Directors. She remains an active participant on panels across the United States.

She has also initiated numerous programs to address the health and future of the field of dance. To that end, she conceived of The National Dance Labs (NDL) a “product-driven,” as opposed to “market-driven,” model for creativity in the performing arts. Dance Lab starts with content and process and uses the device of a transparent laboratory to identify potential audiences and methods to reach those audiences. NDL provides a period of research and development, where collaborating artists experiment and take risks without a particular goal in mind. NDL was inaugurated in 2000 by the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the University of California, Berkeley, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

In 2004, Jenkins and her Company launched a new program, Choreographers in Mentorship Exchange (CHIME). 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.

Jenkins’ 2003-04 activities have included a residency in Kolkata, India to create a new dance at the Shankar Center of The Performing Arts, sponsored by USIA, and a rehearsal period with her Company toward their 2004 season in San Francisco. In June, coinciding with the commencement of her choreographer mentorship program, CHIME, she opened her new studio in the South of Market area of San Francisco.

For her unique artistic vision, Margaret Jenkins has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Irvine Fellowship in Dance, the San Francisco Arts Commission Award of Honor, and two Isadora Duncan Awards. In 2002, she was awarded 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, and she also, on that day, received a Governor’s Commendation from Governor Gray Davis.

Related Events:
Movement in Space and Time: A Conversation on Cunningham Choreography