Preview: Rumble, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Let's get ready to Romeo!

The German hip-hop drama company Renegade Theatre has transformed Shakespeare's tragic story of the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet into a modern-day gangland turf-war full of moves including handstands, spins and body-popping.

The idea to swap the feuding families of Verona for rival breakdance crews in a piece of urban dance theatre called Rumble was the idea of the director-choreographers Markus Michalowski, whose background is in the circus, and Lorca Renoux, a former graffiti artist and B-boy of the Parisian ghetto, along with the German producer Zekai Fenerci.

Rumble, a 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival hit, is now making its London debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall before it tours the UK. It is played out on two scaffolding towers by a young cast of nine hip-hop dancers - mainly former street dancers - who are accompanied by a score featuring beatboxing, sampling, saxophone, drums and cello.

"I think its success is down to the wide appeal of hip-hop," says Michalowski. When he met Fenerci, who had been organising B-boy battles in Germany - "he's the godfather of Ruhr Valley hip-hop' - Michalowski saw the potential of fusing hip-hop and Shakespeare. "I realised that the physicality and intensity needed for the clashing of the two families could be transposed easily into the clashing of rival hip-hop crews.

"It was a huge risk because most of the dancers are street dancers. The dancer who is now playing Paris, Marcel Gebhard, walked past our venue one afternoon and we let him rehearse with us. It is hard to imagine that we are now at such a big venue."

The trio formed Renegade specially to do the show, which had its premier in Germany in 2003. "The balcony scene is the core of the piece," says Michalowski. "Romeo is danced by the street dancer Sefa Erdik ( originally from the German B-boy crews Battle Bunch and Terror Bunch) while Juliet is the trained modern dancer Ulrike Reinbott. The love duet is a marrying of their two styles."

At QEH 2 and 3 February (0870 380 0400), then touring to 26 March ( www.rumbletour.co.uk)