MARGARET JENKINS DANCE COMPANY
May 1-4, 2025
​Z Space, SF
This performance will last approximately 55 minutes with no intermission
Artists
Artistic & Choreographic Direction: Margaret Jenkins
Choreographic & Rehearsal Assistant: Kelly Del Rosario
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MJDC Dancer/Collaborators:
Allegra Bautista, Raven Bautista, Corey Brady, Tristan Ching Hartmann, Carolina Czechowska, Kelly Del Rosario, Claire Fisher-Mendez, Anna Greenberg
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Composer: Paul Dresher and Joel Davel
Text & Structural Concept: Michael Palmer
Production Design: Jack Beuttler
Costume Design: Mary Domenico
Sound Engineer: Jacob Felix Heule
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Live Music: Paul Dresher & Joel Davel
With additional songs: “Baianá” by Barbatuques; “Struggle” by Hania Rani;
and “De Ushuaia a la Quiaca” by Gustavo Santaolalla
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SPECIAL THANKS
Anna Burke, City Dance Studios, Joe Goode Annex, ODC, and the Staff & Crew at Z Space
Artist Bios
Note on Collaboration with Dancers: For each new work, I assemble a company of dancers with whom I have worked, in most instances, for years. In collaboration with myself and the other artistic collaborators, they are a community of makers who fashion the ultimate character and atmosphere of the piece. They generate the material and deeply engage in the process of integrating the movement into the overall structure of a work. Their commitment to making something of meaning to themselves and to our audience is what binds and sustains us in this elaborate and complicated process. I am deeply indebted to, and feel privileged to work with, such amazing people. As we reckon with our current social and political realities, it has become even more consequential to be in the studio with these remarkable human beings.
Note on Artistic Collaborators: Poet and collaborator since 1973, Michael Palmer has been a constant muse, interrogator, and guide, bringing his unique poetic perspective to Wheel. Choreographic assistant Kelly Del Rosario, now in his 18th year, has become an important and supportive voice; this year, he lends his artistic acumen toward developing, in collaboration with the dancers, Wheel's structure and movement vocabulary. Working on Wheel with Paul Dresher and Joel Davel as composers has been a real treat. Together they support, enliven, and compel the work forward. Visual Designer for our 50th anniversary, Jack Beuttler, joins us again for Wheel with his mercurial and mysterious ways. Mary Domenico, costume designer for over seven of our works, has brought her singular aesthetic to Wheel. Separately and in combination, these collaborators have contributed their creative and engaged imaginations to the process and the ongoing conversation, deeply affecting how the wheel turns.
Production Team
MARGARET JENKINS DANCE COMPANY
Artistic Director: Margaret Jenkins
Executive Director: Kegan Marling
Artistic Associate: Michael Palmer
Company Manager: Sophie Otewalt
Production Manager: Kaitlyn Ryan
Outreach Advisors: Kate Courteau, Sravanthi Dev
Costume Assistant: Nichole Kreglow
Bookkeeper: Bonnie Ayers-Namkung
Poster photo Illustration: Sarah Palmer
Poster source photographs: RJ Muna, Austin Forbord, Doug Winter
Postcard & Program Design: Katherine Disenhof
Board of Directors
Marcia Hofer, Margaret Jenkins, Mindy Kershner, Rhys Mason, Michael Palmer
Supporters
Wheel and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company are graciously funded by The Bernard Osher Foundation, Cathy & Jim Koshland, Hellman Foundation, John Sanger Family Foundation, Judith Brown Meyers Fund, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Michael P.N.A. Hormel (in loving remembrance of James C. Hormel), The National Endowment for the Arts, Pro Suecia Foundation, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, and many generous individuals.
Performance Text
Who Are They
Who are they, dancing among the fields and in the ruins? Among the cafes and along the shore? Do they even know? Do they need to know? Who are we who watch and wonder? Do we even know? We in our rags and jeweled crowns, our caves and castles, dachas, pagodas and pavilions, our longhouses and high-rises, villas and flats?
Early and late, near and far, underway or not. Parallel lines stretching toward horizon. A tunnel, a bridge above a gorge, a field glowing gold. A ruined tower, a factory in flames.
Yet are not all provinces filled with similar birds singing similar songs on similar fences? Can we not be more like those birds? Can we not light on some limb stretching out over a border wall, perch wherever, for a moments rest?
How long have we been asking these questions?
After how many trains taken? Provinces crossed, re-crossed.
And what questions will be asked of us? How many? at what borders?
What do we call ourselves, here, after all this moving, all these questions?
The planets must have changed their alignment by now, mustn’t they?
Pulling us one way or another.
Still, we shared some level ground, did we not, in the courtyard?
Wasn’t our footing sure? Didn’t the light make the colors shine?
Didn’t we see each other with a kind of clarity?
Why do we move in here among these tiers of seats, these footlights and panels
Is it the overwhelming heat of the day that makes us long for shelter?
Or is it so we can see the planets, know what sign we’re under,
know what moon governs the order of our going.
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Who Are They (reprise)
Who are they, dancing among the fields and in the ruins? Among the cafes and along the shore? Do they even know? Do they need to know? Who are we who watch and wonder? Do we even know? We in our rags and jeweled crowns, our caves and castles, dachas, pagodas and pavilions, our longhouses and high-rises, villas and flats? Who are they, dancing among the fields and in the ruins?
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22-Berlin (From our window…)
From our train window as we roll on, a broad plain where flakes of snow are dancing in a light breeze, afloat on the breeze and slowly descending. Pine covered hills in the distance, and then suddenly darkness, a howling darkness, as we enter a tunnel. Soon enough we emerge into the light of day, and the dance reappears before our eyes. Yet it appears now that it is not snow we are witnessing in its slow descent, but ash, ash settling on a plain of parched grasses, small fires springing up wherever it comes to earth. And then a second tunnel, the roaring darkness once again into which we are plunged, jolted as always, until we regain the light, and what had been ash now appears to be bodies, wingless birds perhaps, singed by fire and falling as if in slow motion, as if in a dream of falling, but in the full brightness of day.