Burning Man–inspired Morning Wellness Raves: Worth waking up for
31 May 2017
Daybreaker
By Haley Gray
Mini raves are bursting out in the wee hours of the morning in venues across Boulder. Health-conscious partiers are rolling out of bed around 5:30 a.m., donning their wildest garb, and adorning their bodies with swirling lines and playful dabs of body paint. Smiling and sticky with sweat, they dance to a thumping DJ set while most of us are still groggily hitting the snooze button. Live performers dazzle as guests bop and move their hips, all after they’ve practiced a morning vinyasa flow together and tossed back a crisp kombucha.
Daybreaker, an international rave-production company spawned by Burners (devotees of the New Age-y Burning Man festival), has brought its drug- and alcohol-free pop-up dance parties to Boulder. Its goal is to dose attendees; that is, to get natural feel-good chemicals—dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins—flowing by way of communal dance and playful spectacle. The rave is done within a few hours, before guests head to the proverbial office and the workday begins.
Starting in August, the monthly mischief will alternate between bimonthly dance and yoga parties at dawn and, on the remaining months, an alternative happy hour—a ‘Duskbreaker,’ one might say—between the hours of about 5 to 8 p.m.
To find the next pop-up party, visit www.daybreaker.com and check the global calendar for BLDR. And, yes, you will be correct to notice Boulder is the smallest city, among others like New York, Hong Kong and Paris, to host these health-minded celebrations. But who’s surprised?
