Jenice Armstrong: Two to tango: These couples find dance is important to relationship success

DO YOU EVER wonder what it is that keeps some couples together when so many relationships collapse? Commitment aside, having a shared passion can be a plus, as evidenced by the three couples I met recently who are dance partners as well as life partners. You won't see any of these folks on "Dancing with the Stars." They hold down real jobs as researchers, accountants, and lawyers - but they also grab their partners and leave all that behind to tango.

Center City professionals Robert and Trish Orr were both looking for love on JDate, the Internet dating Web site. But they never would have met that way because Robert wasn't the tall, thin kind of guy Trish usually dated and she was in the habit of deleting men who didn't fit her physical specifications. But when she spotted him on June 8, 2002, at a party at the Society Hill Dance Academy, there was no dismissing him. Robert, a certified public accountant for Stein, Feldman & Sampson, was in his element that night, charming the ladies as he circulated around the dance floor, making sure everyone got a chance to dance.

"He was so confident with the dancing and he was at ease with people and interacting with people . . . I got to see his personality shine," Trish recalled.

Robert started dancing in 1996 to prepare for a friend's wedding. He got so good that it wasn't long before he was ballroom dancing competitively, winning his share of trophies. Then he was asked to teach, which was what he was doing the night Trish met him.

That night, out of a room full of women, Robert was drawn to Trish.

"She was just very pretty and she was just enjoying herself," he recalled. "Afterward, she wanted to stay around and dance more . . . We just danced and had a really good time. I had an e-mail [from her] the next morning."

They were going to meet on Saturday for dinner but wound up having drinks on Tuesday. They've been together ever since.

After buying a home in Queen Village, they legalized their commitment at a wedding at the Society Hill dance studio. Their first dance? A fox trot with lifts and turns to "So Happy Together."

To celebrate being 60 years old and a five-year survivor of cancer, Nancy Henkin planned a party and decided the highlight would be a "Dancing with the Stars"-style performance with her husband, Russ. He's a commercial litigator with the Center City law firm of Berger & Montague and she's the executive director of the Intergenerational Center at Temple University, so neither had a lot of time to practice sexy rumba moves.

They'd show up for their lessons with Shana Vitoff, executive director of Society Hill Dance Academy, having forgotten the steps she'd taught them the previous week and they would go back and forth with each other on how to execute them. All that concentration was a welcome distraction from the things they normally worried about. The lines in Russ' 63-year-old face would ease and he'd find himself dropping his courtroom demeanor altogether. Nancy would harken back to being a kid when she enjoyed studying ballet, tap and ballroom.

"It wasn't hard in the sense that I wanted to do whatever would make her happy for her party. Dancing just wasn't my cup of tea. We actually look forward to those islands of time when it's just the two of us and we are learning something new and we're communicating in a different way," Russ told me.

"There are so many issues in a marriage. You are always either couple-centered or family-centered or job-centered. Here, you are doing something that's the opposite of what you've always done. You have to work together to achieve what you really want to achieve, which is the dance."

Their dance wowed the 80 or so friends who came to their party. Afterward, they promised each other to continue dancing, which they did until Nancy injured her back and wound up in rehabilitation for several months. Russ also has back issues and lives in a lot of pain, so that was another distraction. Before long, both were back focusing on work and not really thinking much about dancing.

But recently, they decided to get back into the studio and learn to dance the Argentine tango. To celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary, they plan to travel in March to Argentina to try out their new steps at a milonga with locals.

"Though we sometimes get frustrated because we can't always get all the steps right, we are having a great time. Again we are setting aside time to have fun and to learn something new. Again we are focusing on ourselves as a couple. As we move together to the sounds of Argentine music, we are taken to a place in which our energy flows and our connectedness becomes even stronger," Nancy wrote in an e-mail.

Lori Gallo had never been to a singles dance, so she was understandably jittery back in 2007, when she showed up for one at the Society Hill Dance Academy.

"I really had no expectations. I just wanted to get out and have a good time and I wanted to meet new people," said Gallo, who'd been divorced. "When I walked in . . . I felt somebody looking at me from the back of the room."

To mask her apprehension, the graphic artist walked over to the bar and tried to open a bottle of Chardonnay, but couldn't. She looked up and found Steve Brosius by the bar.

"I asked him if he was the bartender and if he could me open this bottle of wine," Gallo recalled. "Soon after, we started to dance. The instructor lined us up . . . She gave us a few steps to learn and said 'grab a partner.' I was really nervous. He was taking lessons already so he was familiar with the tango, but I wasn't. I felt very nervous and clumsy. Some of my first impressions were that he was patient and kind."

Gallo had so much fun that first night that she signed up for more lessons.

"I was having the time of my life taking ballroom dance lessons and making new friends," she wrote. "About a month went by and I did not see Steve again, though. I thought maybe he stopped taking lessons and I would never see him again. Until one Thursday night at a dance party at the studio, I saw him walk in. I was really surprised at how I felt myself light up when I saw him again. We danced the tango."

Two months after the met on the dance floor, the had their first official date - an April picnic and walk in the park.

Two years later - Feb. 9, 2009 - they married. It was the anniversary of the day they first met on the dance floor.

"We were married at a courthouse and on June 6 we had a more personal wedding day with family and friends," she continued.

Their officiant Dorry Bless read the cherished dance metaphor, "A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules."

On Sunday, Valentine's Day, Society Hill Dance Academy, 409 S. 2nd St., will host "Dances of Love" (tango and rumba) workshops every hour from 5 until 9 p.m. $40 a couple. To register, go to societyhilldance.com. A number of restaurants are offering discounted meals to workshop participants and you can find a list on the academy's Web site. When making your dinner reservation, tell them you are with the Society Hill Dance Academy.