Morning glory, healthy raving

Published on January 10, 2014

Lifestyle

Wak­ing up at 6AM has al­ways been a chal­lenge for me; even the prospect of at­tend­ing the ear­li­est rave of my life did not help the mat­ter. I rolled my­self out of bed with the promise of feel­ing ‘more en­er­gized and alive than I could ever imag­ine’- or so the Morn­ing Glory or­ga­niz­ers would have me be­lieve. Al­though I have never been one for early starts, my over­ar­ch­ing sense of ad­ven­ture left me feel­ing sur­pris­ingly in­trigued when asked whether I would like to cover a ‘rave’ at such an un­nat­ural hour. There would, after all be free mas­sages.

I found my­self soon re­treat­ing into the fur col­lar of my coat as I ap­proached the ware­house space in foggy Hox­ton, start­ing to ques­tion whether I should have just stayed in bed. I was un­sure what to ex­pect of such an event, as the only par­ties I have been to at this time in the morn­ing were those that had spilled over from the night be­fore in an in­tox­i­cated haze. I braced my­self to come face to face with the kind of lip chew­ing party-go­ers I’m ac­cus­tomed to. As such, I was rather de­lighted when I stepped into the ware­house and found a room full of bright-eyed, healthy ravers danc­ing the morn­ing away.

Had I not ex­pe­ri­enced this for my­self, I don’t think I would have be­lieved that a gath­er­ing of this na­ture could exist at this time in the morn­ing. The con­trast be­tween the mis­er­able Wednes­day dawn out­side and the at­mos­phere within these walls was ex­tra­or­di­nary. The bright light­ing and loud, pump­ing music had al­ready worked its magic on the sea of early ris­ers as they hap­pily bounced and danced their way to con­scious­ness. Every­body in the room seemed so over­whelm­ingly eu­phoric and en­thu­si­as­tic that it was ac­tu­ally quite in­fec­tious and I found my­self drawn out of my usual glum morn­ing mood.

The event at­tracted a healthy va­ri­ety of pun­ters rang­ing from tutu-clad girls to awk­wardly bob­bing groups of guys and even a fair few suited and booted of­fice work­ers. The large ma­jor­ity of the crowd ranged from 20-30 years old, but it was nice to see a few solid ap­pear­ances from the older gen­er­a­tions kick­ing it harder than most, dare I say. Fancy dress was in full flow and the bright, gaudy gar­ments were al­most too much for early morn­ing eyes.

I couldn’t help but no­tice how every­body there seemed to have a par­tic­u­lar pas­sion for danc­ing and they were all alarm­ingly good at it, as ex­em­pli­fied by the cou­ple locked in tango and the pirou­et­ting strong men in tights on the stage at the front. This level of danc­ing com­bined with the well-lit dance floor meant that I was hes­i­tant to whip out my lim­ited, rusty dance moves. How­ever, after a lit­tle en­cour­age­ment from friendly fel­low ravers I eased my­self into the thick of the crowd and be­came part of the danc­ing mass.

The DJ’s were the cen­tre of at­ten­tion to an even greater ex­tent than on a typ­i­cal night out, as the crowd of eager and re­cep­tive early ris­ers ap­pre­ci­ated the ar­rival of each song and took it upon them­selves to pro­vide a con­stant stream of peo­ple ser­e­nad­ing the DJ’s on stage with dance and show­ing the rest of us how its done. The music ranged from bang­ing house to cur­rent chart hits and clas­sic club an­thems. The di­ver­sity was suf­fi­cient to keep every­body happy and shak­ing a leg.

Un­like a typ­i­cal night on the town con­sist­ing of shot after shot of Sam­buca, party dwellers here in­dulge in gourmet cof­fee and power smooth­ies that help to cat­alyze the wak­ing up of the body and the mind. Mas­sages are on offer, but only if you ar­rive early enough to sign up. Re­gret­tably I learnt this the hard way.

The ‘morn­ing rave’ was maybe not the rev­e­la­tory cure for morn­ings that I was hop­ing for [nothing but euthanasia can rid you of mornings, Ed.], but it cer­tainly was a re­fresh­ing and en­er­getic ap­proach to the usu­ally mo­not­o­nous morn­ing regime. It also pro­vides an in­ter­est­ing al­ter­na­tive to the night club­bing ex­pe­ri­ence that we have be­come ac­cus­tomed to in this day and age. De­spite my fre­quent morn­ing grumpi­ness, I im­mersed my­self in dance and thor­oughly en­joyed all that the event had to offer. Morn­ing Glory of­fers a whole­some, hearty vi­sion of club­bing that I had never re­ally con­tem­plated.