The fusion has given some students at the Emily K Center a greater appreciation of the past.

"We can understand it better, so we really want to do it," said Willis Allen, 11, a sixth grader at Shepard Middle School. "If it was just Shakespeare, we really wouldn't want to do it. But when you add flavor to it, it'll be better and more understandable."

Nearly 70 students at the West Chapel Hill Street center are putting hip-hop moves on "A Midsummer Night's Dream" during a two-week summer camp Raleigh's Justice Theatre Project has held at the center since it opened five years ago.

With lots of shaking and moving, the dances are large numbers that transport the audience out of the 1500s and into a modern-day music video.

"I think it's a good mix," said Sofia Velazquez, an eighth grader at Immaculata Catholic School. "It combines the past and the present. I don't think Shakespeare intended for hip-hop to be a part of his show, but somehow people made it work."

Those people, along with the students, are play co-directors Deb Royals and Freddie Lee Heath. The costume choices, made to be contemporary and accessible to students, inspired the hip-hop dance, said Heath, a choreographer.

"It's good exercise too," added Royals, the theatre project's artistic director.

This year's production, performed Friday and Saturday, is the first time the company has taken such creative license with the summer program. Past plays include "Annie," "Once on this Island" and "The Wizard of Oz." Students rehearse in the afternoons but devote their mornings to art, yoga, fitness, music and a Shakespeare class.

"In 2010 children have to have relevance, rigor and relationships," Heath said. "It's not always about the product; it's about the process in how you get there. And in those things, going through the process, you can make connections between theater, dance, outside life and make the connection between subject matters."

While the script remains in traditional Shakespearian form, the dancing let students incorporate a little bit of "them" into the play.

"Now with [the dancing] we get to add some of us into it," said Laura Chaparro, 13, an eighth grader at Durham School of the Arts. "It makes me feel good that his year we can show the audience a part of us that sometimes I would be afraid to show. When the audience gets to see that part, it will help them get to know us probably a little bit better."