In a white T-shirt and black athletic pants, long-limbed Benissa Chery, 14, is center stage in Immokalee Middle School cafeteria.

And she knows it. She reminds the group of eight girls of their choreography when they fall out of step. She punctuates her speaking part with sweeping gestures — arms and hands reaching out to lunchroom empty during the afternoon practice, imploring the audience of three to empathize with her.

“We all hurt when people are mean,” she says, carefully enunciating. “We all bleed when we are cut.”

One by one, the seven other teenagers girls on stage contribute their lines, which are about race, equality and community. They are lines from their diaries. Observations from their lives.

“Don’t get alarmed because of the color of your skin,” declares Wezd Servius, also 14, whose voice fills the cafeteria.

They are her words now, her part in the performance. But one of her friends wrote them. All of the girls are performing the words and thoughts of someone else in the after-school dance group. Once a week since February, they have met at the end of the school day with dance instructor Sharon Hill to develop the seven-minute routine, which blends word and dance.

Tonight, their vignette will be but one part of a piece that draws from five Immokalee elementary schools. The culmination of the year-long collaboration of dance professionals in Atlanta and Southwest Florida is called “Ecotone/Immokalee: A Celebration of Now.”

Through the Miracle 2 after-school program, which offers Immokalee students K-8 activities like dance, drums, and cooking from the time they leave their last class until 5 p.m. United Arts Council of Collier County dance instructor Sharon Hill has been teaching at Immokalee Middle School for three years.

But this year would be different.

With extra funding from a grant, the arts group teamed up with Atlanta-based choreographer D. Patton White, who flew down to lead creative movement workshops with three local dance instructors and nearly 100 Immokalee students.

What resulted changed Hill’s nine middle school students’ vision of their own community.

The girls initially balked when Hill gave them homework assignments that would help define their thoughts and the world around them. Afterschool programs shouldn’t be more work than school.

Still, she pushed them to chronicle their thoughts and to talk to people of different ages and cultural backgrounds and record what they’ve learned, in guided diary entries. Some of the girls hesitated. They are tomboys, they said. They don’t write that stuff down.

But the directive came from Miss Sharon.

Hill compiled the entries and snippets of conversations with the girls and spun them into the speaking parts of their portion of the contemporary dance performance.

“I think it was a good process because it got them to examine themselves,” Hill says. “It got us to look at the fact that, OK, we’re in this little place right here, and there are all these diverse groups of people and no one knows anything about anyone else. Let’s see what we can do.”

For the dancers in the middle school program, learning that classmates from other countries have similar traditions, foods, and tastes in music “was a great discovery.”

“Imagine you’re in a place where there is only black people, no other colors,” says Benissa during a break, leaning in for emphasis. “What would you actually feel? You’d feel like there is no color in this place. So that’s why it’s good to have ... a mix of beautiful colors.”

• • •

When the United Arts Council in Naples received a $7,375 arts grant from the Southern Arts Federation, it came with a stipulation: They had to tap into the professional resources from another Southern state to use the funding.

Through the Federation’s online database, program manager Janice Paine (who is also a freelancer visual arts writer for the Daily News) came across D. Patton White, a modern dance choreographer and the artistic director of Beacon Dance in Decatur, Ga.

He wanted to travel and work with in marginalized community; UAC wanted to take advantage of the after-school dance classes they have run in the community for years. Immokalee fit both descriptions.

Paired with a UAC funding and a $1,550 grant from Atlanta-based arts organization Alternate ROOTS, the nearly year-long collaboration totals about $15,000.

White started a series of five visits to Immokalee from August 2007 to May 2008, each between three days and a week long. He observed the community and studied the half-block playground and courtyard of the Immokalee Community School, where White, five adult professional dancers from Georgia, and the local instructors will execute a piece involving 75-100 students and use the plaza of the school as a stage. Based on his impressions of the community and the natural beauty that surrounds it, he called it “Ecotone/Immokalee: A Celebration of Now.”

“We’re getting (the audience) to physically move so they can have a sense of empathy with the dancers as they move,” explains White, “and they can sense what we’re doing with our bodies to communicate and convey messages.”

Words start the process of incorporating these far-reaching notions in dance, says White. The environment, he says, evoked descriptions like soft, wavy, gravely, and marshy. This established a tone.

Then, in the workshops during his visits to the afterschool programs, he asked the students questions like, “What do you want to do?” and “Where do you want to go (in life)?

“We took the answers and developed movements ... and strung them together,” White explains.

But the dance techniques and the specificity of the movements are less important than the students expressing themselves.

“It’s about them taking what we created, and encouraging students to make it their own.”

• • •

It’s three days before the final performance and the shuffle of eight pairs of bare feet moving into their places on the tile stage is interrupted by the flicker of the fluorescent overhead lights.

Then the whirl of the air-conditioning unit slows and sputters to a halt.

The power is out. At the school, around the neighborhood.

Which means they’ll just have to practice to Miss Sharon’s count.

“One two three and four. Five six seven eight.”

They have been practicing since February. The dance routine was built around them.

But there are still hiccups.

“I won’t move on ‘til I get what I want,” Hill says, her words in contrast with her gentle smile.

“Tendue,” she announces. The eight girls’ left legs glide out, toe first. A little ballet from girls who admit they primarily danced hip-hop and R&B before Miss Sharon, who teaches them using classical music, pop and West African beats.

“Make it your own,” says Daphney Souvrain, an eighth grader, as classmate and friend Diana Sanon takes the stage. She’s replacing Tania Jorcelin, 13, for the rest of practice and in Friday’s performance: The seventh-grader will likely miss the performance because of religious obligations.

“Make it your own.”

It’s the mantra of the performance. White uses it. Hill taps into the phrase’s power to encourage the girls. And now the student dancers incorporate it into the vocabulary they use with their peers.

Sometimes the words and the movements flow. Sometimes there are unintended stutter-steps as the girls forget the choreography. But they turn to each other for help. They offer advice.

They repeat the mantra.

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If you go

“Ecotone/Immokalee: A Celebration of Now”

• What: Immokalee students and professional dancers perform a work of contemporary dancecreated by Atlanta choreographer D. Patton White

• When: 7 tonight

• Where: Immokalee Community School, 123 N. 4th Street, Immokalee

Admission: Free

• Information: Call Janice Payne at the United Arts Council, 263-5039

• Something else: The event will be followed by a community potluck. Free.