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So you might guess being sponsored by the Fort Mason Foundation and using the Massive Pavilion space would be the right cup of tea for Margaret Jenkins’ celebration of three decades of activity. Jenkins, the daughter of a poetess and a noted Longshoreman labor leader, is tall, possessed of an absolute hour-glass figure which would have been highly celebrated in elegant Edwardian novels and plays, equally possessed of a keen intellectual curiosity which would have thrust her to the front of the era’s sufferjettes.

Displayed in the mid-section of the Pavilion was a remarkable assembly of Jenkins’ Memorabilia: costumes hung on walls, conscientiously identified for work and designer; Large screens with on going images; a table with five binders of eloquent photographs, assiduously identifying date, dancers, production, collaborators, and pieces of sets to create an open maze where some of San Francisco Area’s most interesting dancers, choreographers and intelligentsia wandered, conversed, and, after the performance, munched the offerings of waiters in black with round trays decorously offering hors d’eouvres.

I have a clear personal memory of a San Francisco Foundation lunch for members of the local dance scene where Margie Jenkins came with a clear agenda: more space for dance classes, rehearsals and performance. No one else present was either so prepared or articulate and able to launch into the discussion of such a pressing need.

All very extraneous, you might say, to the business of dance. Not so in modern dance deeply rooted in the area’s sensibilities. One simply doesn’t title a dance Fault (1996), created at a U.C., Berkeley residency, unknowing part of the campus lies directly on one of the Bay Area’s main fault lines. Another example is Jenkins’ Shorebirds Atlantic (1988), which is specifically tied to the Atlantic City area.

Jenkins also is devoted to several collaborators, the poet Michael Palmer in particular, whose compositions have punctuated, articulated and influenced the mood and development of the Jenkins’ choreography almost as long as Margie has had a company in San Francisco. Rinde Eckert, present and appearing in two numbers in the retrospective pieces of work, and the Paul Dresher Ensemble, also contributed to the special quality of the evening.

The audience saw parts of The Gates (Far Away Near), 1993, No One But Whittington, 1978; May I Now (18 Questions in the Space of an Answer, 2001; Shelf Life, 1986; Fractured Fiction, 2003, a premiere; Shorebirds, Atlantic, 1988; Pedal Steal, 1985; and another section of The Gates.

The Gates was a particular milestone for Jenkins, for it clearly reflected the diverse influences which have wafted past the Golden Gate entrance: Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, all the technological marvels being generated in Silicon Valley, the more esoteric ideas about cosmological directions and centers of the body, whether Chinese meridian in concept or owing origin to the Kundalini theories of charkas, and far from least, some of the early philosophic thought of the Graeco-Judaic traditions.

For a conceptual tsunami, it is hard to best these sub-texts that hover around movement embracing the ceremonial and ritualistic, fast-moving and chaotic, is individually oriented and group cohesive at times, in succession and in denouement. I remember identifying parts, to my great delight, but worrying about how Margie would bring it together, for it was a work, awesome in its tribute to its place of genesis and time in history. Seeing the two parts again, similar emotions resurfaced, the same comprehen sion and gratitude, at the Jenkins’ capacity for juggling intellectual complexity in physical form, swept over me again.

Shelf Life and Shorebirds, Atlantic were new to me, and I delighted in the strength of Eckert’s presence and superb vocal delivery and strength; a special treat. The theme concerning the confluence of plots from paperback to paperback on a reader’s shelf, the purchase-discard, and the verbalized fantasy of what might happen when two plots get together, was tremendously engaging. As a child a movie where a modern gangster themed page got stuck to an ante-bellum romance totally captivated me. Here it was again, but live instead of on celluloid.

Shorebirds, Atlantic concerned loneliness, fatal illness, suicide and chance encounter. With Jenkins, Eckert and guest artist Kathleen Hermesdorf shrouded in voluminous white garments and headgear, their eyes equally veiled with small oval sunshades, a shape which proclaimed studied attitude and impersonal distance all over the place. Jenkins and Eckert demonstrated the power individual performers can exert on the bleakest of subject matter; it was definitely a tour de force of two remarkable performers.

The dancers currently working with Jenkins are: Manuelito Biag; Mary Carbonara; Melanie Elms; Deborah Miller; Heidi Schweiker; Levi Toney; Oscar Trujillo, their variety of height and difference in muscle and mass made the movement,ensemble and individual passages constantly fascinating. Jenkins ability to wield these performers into ensemble and groupings at moments touched the sublime.