how to call a jquery plugin from inside an angular.dart component?

I am learning about angular.dart components by trying to make one that will access an existing jquery plugin. I am trying something like the following:

library mylib;

import 'dart:html'; // querySelector
import 'package:js/js.dart'; // javascript 
import 'package:angular/angular.dart';

@NgComponent(
    selector: 'aSelector',
    templateUrl: 'partial.html',
    cssUrl: 'style.css',
    publishAs: 'ctrl',
    map: const {
      'param': '=>param'
    }
)
class myComponent extends NgShadowRootAware {
  String param;
  Compiler compiler;
  Injector injector;
  Scope scope;

  MyComponent(this.compiler, this.injector, this.scope);

  void onShadowRoot(ShadowRoot shadowRoot) {
    this.scope.$watch((int) => shadowRoot.querySelector('.myContainer').text.length, (currentValue, previousValue, Scope scope) {
      if (currentValue != previousValue) {
        var container = context.jQuery('.myContainer', shadowRoot);
        var options = map({
          'p1': 1,
          'p2': 2
        });
        container.jqplugin(options);
      }
    });
  }
}

Unfortunately, the 'container' seems to be empty... How to make jQuery select an element that is inside a component, i.e. in shadow dom?

BTW, what is the currently recomended way to import js? I have found this:

import 'package:js/js.dart' as js;

but now that some part of the functionality of package js being moved into dart:js, I'm not sure what one is supposed to do.