Shapiro and Smith Dance Company's Anytown: Stories of America arrives with a great hook. It features the music of Bruce Springsteen along with that of his wife and bandmate Patti Scialfa, and Soozie Tyrell, another E Street band member who also happens to be the stepsister of company co-director Joanie Smith.

Clearly the big draw here is the tunes by Springsteen, who does not let his music drop just anywhere on the stage. Of the show's nearly two-dozen songs, eight belong to the Boss; several are rather obscure cuts and a couple are truncated versions, so playing up that angle to lure the popular rocker's fans is a bit of a cheat.

Then, too, Shapiro and Smith is a dance company, so it's the dance that matters most anyway. Does it deliver? Yes and no. The company's blend of contemporary and pedestrian gesture is both literal and obtuse — not a bad thing per se, but it does cause confusion because the employment of both styles is random. Certain selections act out scenarios and others are more pure dance numbers — somewhat Broadwayesque, but not quite. In any event, the piece hopscotches between the two with neither interpretation taking firm hold.

Meanwhile, the music features descriptive lyrics that are used as springboards for dance numbers intended to reflect the mood and character of those words. In a piece like "The Big Muddy" — a Springsteen tune about wading through considerable troubles — Shapiro and Smith's adaptation works well. Three dancers act out a love triangle; a woman falling in and out the two men's arms, the men tugging at her, and finally when one wins, the other follows by crawling on the stage while gently cupping the woman's feet. It's an evocative emotional slice of love and loss. With "Born in the U.S.A." — a major Springsteen hit about a downtrodden Vietnam vet — the company appears to be at a church revival or perhaps a town meeting, but whatever it is, the connection between song and the dance — which may have something to do with a cry for communal allegiance — is tenuous.

Anytown aims to present a slice of small-town American life where inhabitants experience trials and tribulations including war, flood, death, lost innocence and more. As such it's a very human work with a lot of heart. Yet for all its good intentions the piece feels like a work that is still finding out what it wants to be.