Social media is a constant in our day to day, Te’Meira Rutherford, Zae’ya Tucker-Crockwell and J’Zari Zuill-Dillas are putting it to music.

They are the choreographers of #Trending, a show that’s happening at The Berkeley Institute on Wednesday.

Dance instructor Nikia Manders invited students in her S4 class to submit pieces for consideration; Te’Meira, Zae’ya and J’Zari all accepted the challenge.

“I chose the theme of social media just because they were so much influenced by it,” Ms Manders said. “They had to pick subtopics. Te’Meira’s and Zae’ya’s dances are both kind of inspired by culture and J’Zari’s dance was inspired by the Top 100 so she picked Beyoncé.

“We picked some of the themes that are occurring, some of the things that they listen to all the time on social media. So music and movement that inspired them and then we put it together for a show to showcase what they learnt in school.”

Although similar shows were once held regularly, this is the first since the pandemic.

Te’Meira saw it as an opportunity.

“I took Ms Manders’s class for three years, throughout my whole high school experience, and one thing that you look for with doing dance classes is basically the end result – getting to showcase your pieces and your creativity,” she said.

“Choreographing is very different from just learning pieces that Ms Manders has created for us because you have to go through learning different motifs, different strategies of dance … We have to learn how to move, travel, put shapes and sizes in our dance as well as levels.

“It’s a very difficult process, but when you stick to it and have a great teacher like Ms Manders, you can get through anything.”

Accepting the role meant taking on the responsibility of having to tell friends what to do, Te’Meira said.

“You have to up that level of maturity within yourself to be able to control your peers. You have to be able to get them to rehearsals on time and you have to have the ability and the strength to tell [them] if they can’t show up to rehearsal you will have to cut them out of your piece. You risk friendships but I’m willing to push through it.”

Zae’ya, 17, felt confident that her experience as a prefect would help.

“I believe that I have great leadership. And I feel like my leadership in this case was very helpful when it came to getting people to rehearsals and getting people to learn the dances and teaching them the dances,” said Zae’ya, who created two dances for the show and helped the other choreographers with their work.

#Trending was a collective decision; the students decided it would be interesting to come up with movements based on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and X.

“Ms Manders told us that we were going to have a showcase and so she asked us to generate ideas of what we wanted our showcase to be around or based off of.

“Someone mentioned social media so we started thinking of how we can create dances and moves.

“We were given a motif and we had to generate three different dance moves and then build off of that in order to create our dances and then add music and our dancers,” Zae’ya said.

The concept was “very hard” to transform into dance. As a group, they started working on the show last October.

The choreography was a first for J’Zari. “I've danced since I was around two years old at different dance schools but right now I just dance at Berkeley for the class,” she said.

“I'm excited because I worked really hard on my dance so I'm excited for people to see what I have choreographed.”

Said Te’Meira: “It's going to be a hot topic, a night to remember because the Berkeley Institute showcase is coming in hot.”

About 40 dancers are involved in the show. About 20 take the stage for each dance. Apart from the pieces choreographed by Te’Meira, Zae’ya and J’Zari there is a dance the entire class worked on together.

As explained on Instagram: “The student choreographers have taken extra time outside of class to audition fellow dancers, teach and lead their peers in rehearsals.

“Dance instructor Nikia Manders has guided the student choreographers to showcase their work as part of their Dance Production class and performance grade.

Students took inspiration from popular memes and trends across the various social media platforms to create their projects.”

Especially because of the effort put in, Ms Manders said she hopes people turn out to see what they’ve accomplished.

“The students are working really hard so they want as many of their family members and supporters to come,” she said.

• The Berkeley Institute Dance Programme’s student choreography concert #Trending takes place in the school cafetorium on Wednesday at 6pm. Tickets, $10, are available from the school office