The early bird gets the rave

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They could have danced all night . . . but instead, they got up early and went to Daybreaker, “a morning movement that will start your day off unlike anything else.”

Matthew Brimer ’09, a cofounder of the work/learn startup General Assembly, hatched the idea with his friend Radha Agrawal over falafel at 2 o’clock one morning in Brooklyn. The idea: a dance party that starts at 7 a.m. On a work day.

That’s right, a 7 a.m. rave.

There’s more to it, as Brimer and Agrawal write on the Daybreaker Facebook page: it’s “about dancing before the day broke with people we love. About cultivating a community that values camaraderie, self-expression, wellness, immediacy . . . and mischief. About going to work with our brows slightly dewed from moving our bodies with reckless abandon, sans alcohol but with so much spirit.”

No alcohol, no drugs (except caffeine), but plenty of water and fruit juice. Other than that, the pictures look a lot like a late-night dance party: DJ, lights, giant jellyfish.

“Usually when I DJ it’s 4 a.m. and everybody is f—ed up,” David Heyerman tells the New York Daily News. “But at Daybreaker, people are dancing harder than they would at night, and are more receptive to the music.”

The parties began in New York last December and recently branched out to San Francisco. More cities might follow. Participants pay $25 apiece; for an extra $10 and the sacrifice of another hour’s sleep, there’s yoga at 6 a.m.

Tickets have been selling out. “It fosters this community where entrepreneurs can be creative,” Brimer tells Business Insider. “So there's the physical aspect, but also the social energy, open-minded, and artistic side to it.”

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The Yale Alumni Magazine is published by Yale Alumni Publications Inc., an alumni-based nonprofit that is not run by Yale University. Its content does not necessarily reflect the views of the university administration.