Phonte Coleman’s Two-Step Thursday

Globe, Raleigh

Thursday, June 11, 2009 (continuing every other Thursday)

Thanks to some handstand-breakdance maneuver I hoped to land on the dance floor at the first of Phonte’s weekly Tigallo’s Two-Step Thursday affair at Raleigh club Globe, I nearly fractured my thumb last week. It’s not broken, I think, but it is about the size of a chicken nugget. At least it’s a casualty of war with which I’m willing to live.

While there might not have been as many people as the Little Brother/ Foreign Exchange emcee/ crooner would have preferred for his first throwdownan attempt to offer a disco aesthetic in the Triangle and encourage the young, professional, urban clientele to come to the club and dance and sweat, rather than try and preserve their dry-cleaned ensembles by ‘holding the walls up”Phonte’s chosen DJ, DJ Castro, tried his best to execute a dance-party mix to get the wallflowers on the floor and groovin’. Ultimately, though, Castro ended up playing to a mostly empty dance floor, competing with the crowd next door at The Red Room, where a bunch of sexy Latina women were shimmying and twirling to reggaeton.

And, hell, I can’t lie: I even made my way to Red Room, where I received a two-and-a-half minute hands-on tutorial on how to salsa from someone whose name I don’t remember. After the lesson, I invited her over to Phonte’s shindig for some good ol’ dancing. She moved. She laughed. And she left rather quickly. Fine by me. I had enough fun tearing up the vacant dance floor and watching Phonte play gracious host. ‘Extra big shout out to the old white lady who came at the end and shut shit DOWN. Best dance partner I had all night,” he later communicated via his Twitter account. “My feet are killin me.”

Whenever someone says that their feet are “killin’” them, that means that they’re gettin old, right? OK, Phonte may be gettin older and outgrowing his Little Brother epithet, but he still has a lot of fun and two-steppin’ in him. Whattya say we join him in his future Two-Step Thursdays. Spread the word. The potential for movement happens again Thursday, June 25.

Update: As we noted in other posts, this event is weekly at The Globe.