The global roll-out of a new kind of start to your day has come to Dublin. Morning Gloryville is coming to the capital, a little over a year after its birth in London last May.
The premise is simple, but eyebrow-raising for some. Perhaps it’s best framed as a series of questions: are you a morning person? Do you always aim to go to the gym before work but never quite summon up the motivation? Do you get to the gym only to realise you don’t want to be there? And do you enjoy dancing?
If you tick all those boxes but still have the urge to make the best of your early mornings, Morning Gloryville might be what you’re looking for.
Morning Gloryville is an early morning rave. Starting at 6.30 am and going through until 10.30 am, it is pitched as an alternative to the perceived slog of cross-trainers and treadmills. Attendees can enjoy healthy early morning refreshments and services to get them warmed and ready to dance.
NewsFour spoke with Morning Gloryville’s Dublin agent Ed Hurrell, a Sandymount resident, and Chris Flack, organiser and promoter, about why they think dancing at dawn is a good idea.
“Morning Gloryville was created by Samantha Moyo in London last year as an alterParty Hard, Live Cleannative to the drudgery of the morning commute and the gym,” explains Flack. “It’s a kind of outgrowth of the Conscious Clubbing movement, taking the drink and drugs out of clubbing and making it more about being fully alert and in the moment as you dance.”
This year sees the global launch for the events, rolling out internationally. Events have taken place in New York, London, Amsterdam and Barcelona. “We’re in talks with about a hundred cities. 10 are rolling out this summer,” Flack said.
Chris and Ed both attended their first event earlier this year, in London, and came away impressed and eager to be involved. How did they become involved to begin with? “Well, I was actually running a similar event, but it was an after-work event called After Worky Boogie Woogie. It was going well, with around 30 to 50 people attending a month,” said Hurrell. “Then a friend told me about Morning Gloryville; I contacted them, and ended up as their Dublin agent. I brought Chris in because he’s a friend, and I know he is very good at organising events.”
The events offer smoothies and coffee and, in the interest of making sure everyone is warmed up and ready to dance, there are free massages and a Yoga corner, where instructors are on hand to help would be revellers stretch the sleep out of their limbs. All well and good, but how do you get people dancing at that hour of the morning?
“We employ motivational dancers,” answered Flack. “The one we attended in London earlier in the year, in Hackney, to begin, I was standing on the sidelines tapping my foot, as you do, but the motivational dancers really help set the dance floor going.”
As for the music, there’s a balance to be struck: “First thing in the morning is a bit early for hipster playlists. It’s a general kind of crowd and there needs to be a bit of a universal appeal to the music, to get people to be willing to dance. So there are classics and floor-fillers,” said Flack. “We’ve had good feedback from DJs though. Rob Da Bank (UK DJ known for his dancefloor mixes and BBC radio show) loved it. He liked that no one was high or drunk, so he could really see how people were reacting to his set-list. He told us he was using it to test out new mixes.”
Sobriety and alertness is a big part of the intention behind the Morning Gloryville events. They’re intended to be mid-week, to reduce the odds of people turning up who have been out all night and are a bit worse for the wear. There’s no VIP list either; everyone turns up the same.
Will it catch on though, one has to wonder. Everyone involved hopes so. The simultaneous international rollout is part of that hope, large-scale and everywhere it can be at once. “The hope is that people will bring their colleagues from work, that it will spread that way,” said Hurrell. “The idea is that people turn up for their job energised and inspired. It could be good for team-building, or for people in creative lines of work.”
The July event will have been and gone by the time NewsFour readers see this article but the morning raves will be a monthly occurrence.
See Morning Gloryville Dublin on Facebook for local updates, and check out www.morninggloryville.com
Pictured: Early morning revellers at a recent Harcourt Street event. Photos courtesy of Andrew Miller.
By Rúairí Conneely
