I think I first saw A Chorus Line on somebody's VCR when I was around 11 years old, living in South Texas and taking after-school dance classes. I knew what it was to stumble through new steps but had no idea dancers—and the people in charge of dancers—could be so mean about it.

My first impulse while watching A Chorus Line at the 5th Avenue Theatre, almost two and a half decades later, was to compare notes with my 11-year-old self to see what I'd gotten right and what I'd gotten wrong. Leotards and leg warmers: check. Dancers at an audition having to learn combinations at inhuman speeds: check. A startling lack of conviviality in the room: check. A sadistic casting director putting people on the spot by asking deeply personal questions: check. Said questions provoking a rainbow of anxieties expressed in speech and song: check—although I diverge from my 11-year-old self here. At the time, the characters' angst was a shock. I wondered if it was specific to their profession or, perhaps, New York City. Now I know that daddy issues, body issues, aging issues, and the other goblins occasionally grow to monstrous proportions in people from a broad spectrum of careers.

Still, after years of writing about and getting to know "show people," I've learned there is a special class of anxiety reserved for those whose bodies are their work tools. Singers and actors suffer from it, but dancers may have it worst, because historically the world hasn't tended to care what a dancer thinks. Her expressive capacity might begin in her brain but it ends at her skin (Black Swan, for example, climaxes with Natalie Portman bloodily sprouting black feathers through her flesh during a performance of Swan Lake—a horror-movie take on a dancer's inner turmoil overwhelming her outside for the "perfect" performance). Which might explain why some people seem to subconsciously think of dancers as a species of sex worker. Several dancers I've known have said they dread telling people what they do for a living because the next question is often: "So, you're a stripper?"

A Chorus Line lets its characters spend a couple of hours airing their insecurities, then, for the closing reprise of "One" ("singular sensation/Every little step she takes..."), folds them into the military uniformity of a kick line. They're ironically singing about "the One," the star they're going to dance backup for but also the star they all dream of being—they'll have to dance in lockstep today if they hope to become individuals tomorrow. The lights fade to black with them still kicking, giving the superficial glamour of Broadway an aftertaste of bile and oblivion. Some bile went into making the show as well. Its original creator, Michael Bennett, became a hate magnet in the mid-'70s for interviewing dancers about their lives and appropriating the material wholesale for the script—especially when the dancers who'd donated the text had to audition to play themselves.

The 5th Avenue's production, directed by David Bennett—"no relation," he writes in his program bio—is a shiny, well-polished version of the 1975 classic. Maybe even a little too shiny, it shimmies across the stage as a glitzy homage to Broadway's well-manicured surface instead of taking the opportunity to serve as an unsettling gaze at the grittiness behind the curtain. (This was a choice, not a default: Bennett demonstrated immense aptitude for grit with his direction of Keri Healey's bloody but nuanced noir Torso at Theatre Off Jackson in 2012.)

But if polished surfaces are your thing, you'll find blinding facets in this Chorus Line with a good collection of triple-threat talents—including Mallory King as Kristine and Paul Flanagan as Al, a newlywed couple (she's a nervous scatterbrain, he's a Bronx boy who tries to help by finishing her sentences) who sing a fast, flighty, and genuinely funny duet about how she can't sing. Meaghan Foy lights up the stage as Val, a refreshing blast of confidence after all the others' hand-wringing, who dances powerfully and sings brassily about the joys of plastic surgery: "Tits and ass, bought myself a fancy pair!" (For the first part of the run, Val was played by Taryn Darr.) The 5th has restored Michael Bennett and Bob Avian's original, high-'70s choreography—a tour through tap, ballet, and big Broadway combinations (it's a dance call, after all) that, in some of the more expressive sequences, smuggles in traces of jazz and the undulations of disco. Richard Peacock as Richie gives a whirlwind, dynamo performance through all these styles and more in his powerhouse number "Gimme the Ball."

But the most satisfyingly complex moment in this production comes during the first appearance of "One," which grinds along dissonantly upstage as the imperious casting director, Zach (Andrew Palermo), and his former lover and former star, Cassie (Chryssie Whitehead), duke it out. She wants him to cast her in his chorus; he thinks she's too good for that and isn't even capable of dancing "like everybody else."

"One smile and suddenly nobody else will do," the auditioning dancers sing ominously while Zach barks at his ex: "Dance like everybody else!" The dedication in the 5th Avenue's program quotes Michael Bennett: "... to anyone who has ever danced in a chorus or marched in step... anywhere." Marching in lockstep is a peculiar phenomenon for an American work of art to celebrate. But that's showbiz.