Almost.
Yes, Morning Gloryville is a dance party — glowing costumes, pulsing bodies, thumping bass — but the bar was serving coffee and cold-pressed juice. And rather than necking in the corner, people were enjoying free massage. By the time Slye arrived just after 8 a.m., the crowd had been going for an hour and a half. It was over by about 10:30 a.m.
A surge in morning dance parties is bringing many of San Francisco’s increasingly discordant tribes together to dance. Companies Morning Gloryville and Daybreaker have hosted a combined 17 parties since both came to San Francisco in June. Daybreaker SF started with one a month — the first in June had the largest attendance of all Daybreaker parties nationally up until then — and has increased to every three weeks or so; Morning Gloryville’s first San Francisco party was sold out.
'Celebrating our wild side’
This new brand of party — not to be confused with the after-after-party scene at places like San Francisco’s Endup — are a very San Francisco thing, says 27-year-old McKenzie Brill, who is San Francisco’s “head glory agent” for Morning Gloryville, a London company that began in May 2013. “There’s a general eccentricity in the city and a history of celebrating our wild side,” she says. “San Francisco is not afraid to try new things.”
Among the crowd of about 250 was Slye’s friend Robeen Frank, a Mill Valley mom who owns a marketing company; 28-year-old Benjamin Gleitzman, an Alameda software engineer, technologist and co-founder of Ruse Laboratories; SoMa musician and nightlife icon Marcus Scott, 54; and a handful of children (those younger than 12 got in free).
The day before, a Daybreaker party brought 400 to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. San Francisco was the second location for the New York company, which started in December 2013. It’s billed as a “morning movement” that founders Radha Agrawal and Matthew Brimer started as a “social experiment” all about “dancing your face off” before the day breaks.
Rivals’ welcoming spirit
Daybreaker tickets range from $20 to $35; Morning Gloryville tickets are $18 in advance or $25 for last-minute friends who were persuaded to tag along. (There aren’t many spontaneous drop-ins from passersby.) Although they are competitors, there is a welcoming spirit among the producers; they each put the other on their guest lists. Ultimately, says Daybreaker SF’s Stephanie Lepp, “the real competition is boring, uninspired mornings.”
Brimer says that, initially, before it “became a thing” in New York, people were skeptical about waking up at the crack of dawn to dance. But when Daybreaker announced it was coming to San Francisco, he says, everyone immediately got it. He is keen to avoid the word “rave” because of its reputation for drug use, he says. Rather, attendees are encouraged to focus on the intoxicating effects of collectively dancing to music.
After attending seven morning dance parties, Gleitzman says that doing drugs just doesn’t cross his mind. “Even pot, I’ve just never seen it,” he says. “When you take a holistic approach to a party and you appeal to all the senses, you don’t have to rely on drugs.”
That’s reflected in the ritualistic flow of a Daybreaker event. After yoga, the party gets hopping around 8 a.m., with performances by dancers and musicians. Attire falls into three categories: workout clothes, work attire or extravagantly orchestrated costumes.
Andre Le, a 29-year-old senior UX designer at Wearable Intelligence, says the emphasis on dancing reminds him of Castro clubs. Wearing a button-down shirt, jeans and oxfords, he fit in with Sam Johnson, who was celebrating his birthday in a zebra-print body suit. It’s not often that dance clubs are lit enough to observe fellow dancers, but self-consciousness seemed to have been flung aside with the coats and purses.
'Rave your way into the day’
It’s a format that’s been working for Donna Carroll for seven years. She hosts Ecstatic Dance in Oakland, which hosts free-form dance parties on Sunday mornings for $15 in Oakland’s Historic Sweet’s Ballroom. About 300 people start with yoga until the DJ gradually builds the energy to create a church-like atmosphere.
It’s not surprising that the atmosphere is exuberant. To wake up at 6 a.m. to “rave your way into the day” demonstrates a level of commitment more associated with SoulCycle than clandestine club scenes. One might think that a mom might shy away from sharing her “morning rave” story — but the opposite is true.
“There’s something nice, when you’re a working mom, to go out and dance,” says Frank, who compares the vibe to Burning Man, which she has attended for 14 years. “I was singing as I was picking up the kids from school.”
Early morning music fix
Many participants are frequent Burners, re-creating the festival’s atmosphere in short monthly increments. Jonathan Will is resident DJ with Pink Mammoth, an arts collective that originated at Burning Man. When he performed at Morning Gloryville, he wasn’t expecting people to be as into the music as they are. “A lot of us have fun, we have jobs,” he says. “But as we grow, it’s a cool way to get our music fix without staying out late.”
No longer just the purview of wee hours and coming-of-age indiscretions, electronic music is also growing up. At the same time, dancing is celebrated in pop culture, thanks to reality dance competitions that “bring dance back as an acceptable idea,” Carroll says.
“People give each other permission to be more free,” she says. “I believe that everyone’s a dancer in their heart. There’s some piece of us in our ancestry that wants to dance, and it doesn’t matter what it looks like.”
Article and Photos Sourced From: http://www.sfgate.com/style/article/Morning-dance-parties-unite-Mill-Valley-moms-5993614.php#photo-7326767
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