It’s a freezing cold morning in Hoxton before rush-hour, and the streets are deserted. But down a graffiti-covered flight of stairs, dubstep beats are pumping from an underground basement, and Hackney’s younger crowd are flocking towards the entrance in neon coloured latex.
To an outsider, it appears to be a strange mix of a hard-core party that’s run on too long, and a gym-bunny filled aerobics class. But Daybreaker is a new breed of morning rave, a rapidly growing phenomenon where people meet to dance and socialise before the sun comes up.
Lemon juice and cayenne pepper
The concept, according to organisers, is about “dancing cultivating a community that values camaraderie, self-expression, wellness, immediacy… and mischief.”
It has every feature of a sweaty downtown rave in a trendy nightspot, but drugs and alcohol are replaced with healthy concoctions of lemon juice and cayenne pepper. The partiers are high on life. The closest thing to drugs are the large inflatable mushrooms being passed through the crowd like sacred artefacts – for which I can find no explicable reason. As friends and strangers grind and sway in the neon lights to the DJ’s upbeat mix, two saxophone players waltz through the crowd.
Perfect recipe for awkwardness?
A sober group of strangers dancing intimately almost immediately after getting out of bed reads like the perfect recipe for awkwardness. But after ten minutes of ‘raving’, I forget I’ve never met these people before. Everyone talks to everyone. My inhibitions are left at the door.
As I leave, I am forced to remind myself that I have a full day ahead of me, and that I won’t be crashing into bed with an end-of-night-kebab. It might be something to do with the coffee served on tap, but there is a real novelty in starting the day with a party.
