Prepared words speak louder than the action

Simone Forti is probably one of the most experienced, interesting dance improvisers around, often using the spoken word in ways that make you see that bodies also “speak.” She also has evocative stories in her past, fragments of which provided the very few noteworthy moments in “War and Variations,” on Thursday night at Highways in Santa Monica. The hourlong improvised work, also featuring Dale Eunson and Terrence Luke Johnson, is based on her childhood memories of World War II.

Forti and her Italian Jewish family escaped Mussolini’s Italy by pretending to enter Switzerland to ski. She remembers the smell of coal back then, the feel of silk brought by a sailor on leave and the stories about her uncle who fought in the French Underground and died on the way to Dachau.

On arrival in America, she instantly thought of herself as a New Yorker. Now, she’s worried about the imminence of another war, and she can make you feel her anxiety by clutching a bag to her prone body and repeating phrases you think you know how to finish when she trails off: “As long as my little thing is ... “ (safe); “I know what they’re doing ... “ (killing); and “We escaped through the mountains

Forti could sometimes make movement her ally as she used words, but the evening never really got beyond the partial telling of stories with words. The prepared text read by each performer was always stronger than the improvised movement. They tried repetition, imitation and variation, in an effort to riff on a theme, but things petered out. Eventually, improvised dialogue trivialized grand themes, and the whole enterprise was shadowed by one of the worst results that improvised dance-theater can engender -- the longing for a script.

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‘War and Variations’

Where: Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica

When: 8:30 tonight

Price: $15

Contact: (310) 315-1459