Rave review: How I survived a morning dance do

There’s something smug about people who voluntarily get up early. I guess now I’m one of them, writes Josephine Franks.

There’s something smug about people who voluntarily get up early. Start-up bros. Gym buffs. Meditators. Night owls don’t make you feel you should be staying up later, but like vegans and polyamorists, early birds have a way of hinting their life choices are superior.

Given my unhealthy relationship with my snooze button, I’m not necessarily the target audience for a sober rave at 7am on a Saturday.

But it’s Morning People’s fifth birthday, and children’s parties are one of the exceptions to my no-socialising-before-midday rule.

In place of birthday cake and balloons there’s free coffee and strobe lights. As part of the Elemental Festival, Morning People has taken over Auckland’s Town Hall.

It’s an all-ages crowd, from a baby in huge noise-cancelling headphones to grey-haired ravers. Some came ready to sweat in activewear, others in glitter and neon, and a few in dressing gowns.

The town hall was the biggest venue yet for Morning People, founder Jamie Newman told me in advance of the event.

From early parties of 15 friends in a community hall, they have grown to regularly draw crowds of 200-300.

A lot of those yesterday were regulars – you could tell by the way they clung to the dance floor from the get-go.

For the uninitiated, warming up took a bit longer. Barely 45 minutes after rolling out of bed I was clutching a filter coffee at the edge of a room throbbing with bodies. I couldn’t shake the feeling I was an extra in a movie club scene: Sober and going through the motions.

It wasn’t until the second half of the morning, when Shapeshifter’s Sambora took the stage, that I stopped believing a director was going to step in and call cut.

Once I’d got into the music, I started to appreciate the energy in the room. From the front to the back, everyone was dancing. No clusters of stoic men clutching pints and nodding their heads, no rotation of smokers shuffling outside.

The joy and the freedom reminded me of the Instagram stories I’ve seen this week of ‘‘freedom day’’ in the UK, friends revelling in their first night ‘out out’ since the start of the pandemic.

Except this came with a much lower chance of contracting Covid, and anyway, the Venn diagram of people who enjoy a

sober rave and who diligently use the Covid Tracer App seems to be a perfect circle.

Newman has been putting these parties on for five years. Through 160 early mornings, shifting venues, multiple DJs and endless cups of coffee, the energy has stayed the same – and he attributes Morning People’s success to that.

When morning raves were the hot new trend of the mid2010s, people made sense of it by calling it a fitness craze.

But really it’s about dancing, and having fun, and connecting with strangers in a sweaty room, Newman said.

Exercise is just a byproduct. The popularity really started to take hold after the parties shifted to the subterranean Whammy Bar on Karangahape Rd, he said.

‘‘People would totally lose themselves and come out into the light at the end of it and feel like they’d had a genuine club experience,’’ he said.

Emerging blinking into Aotea Square just after 9am, I see what he means.

‘‘Great night!’’ someone behind me shouts.

There’s a lingering tiredness, but I’m smiling, energised. And yes, just a bit smug.