Second position

Somewhere along the line, Valentine's Day became a viable release date regardless of day of the week, though it's odd we're not seeing more shoddy romances taking advantage.

Your only sequel choice for a romantic evening is Step Up 2: The Streets, or due to some vague poster design, possibly Step Up 2 The Streets. The 2006 original was the directorial debut of former dancer/choreographer Anne Fletcher. In it, an uncouth street dancer meets up with a privileged ballet type, and I presume they teach each other about life, love, and the first five positions.

Step Up grossed just under a hundred million bucks worldwide on a $21m budget, so here we are, though it's not the first of the modern crop of dance flicks to reach sequeldom. 2001's Save the Last Dance, in which a couth but troubled street dancer (Sean Patrick Thomas) teams up with an unprivileged but talented ballet type (Julia Stiles), helped kick off the new wave of teen dance flicks. Its success led to a direct-to-video sequel in 2006, which invoked the twin concepts of stepping and upwardness with the working title Steppin' Up: Save the Last Dance 2, but released as Save the Last Dance 2. Chelsea Hobbs was to take over for Julia Stiles in a proposed TV series, and a pilot was filmed, but never aired.

Credited on all four films (writer of Save the Last Dance and Step Up; character credit on sequels) is one Duane Adler. Hot on the heels of Save the Last Dance came another 2001 Adler-scripted dancer, The Way She Moves, a TV movie about Houston-based Annabeth Gish, whose premarital mambo lessons teach her that her heart is full of salsa, not stuffy fiancé Daniel Cosgrove. Please do not confuse The Way She Moves with How She Move, the non-Duane Adler-scripted 2007 dancer about a high school student who gets into street dancing to find a way out of her crime-infested hood.

Next up for Adler is Make It Happen, scheduled for release some time in 2008. Mary Elizabeth Winstead (The Ring Two, Final Destination 3, Die Hard 4.0) aims for a career in dance. No crime statistics yet available for her neighborhood. Also no word yet on whether her second-billed consort Riley Smith is from the opposite side of the tracks.