What does one wear to a 6:30 a.m. sober rave on a Wednesday?
That was my chief concern as I prepared to attend this month's edition of Morning Gloryville, a new "immersive morning dance experience" in Williamsburg that's set off trend alert sirens all over town. The group's website suggests you "dress to sweat," but the event's Facebook invite implores you to "[g]et your wild animal outfits ready," which is confusing, because don't animals sweat through their paws?
In the end I elected to don basic gym clothes, and when I arrived at the Brooklyn Zoo—a massive warehouse-turned-gym in East Williamsburg—it was clear my choice was conservative. Some of the early morning attendees were similarly dressed in shorts and tanks, but others were in full-on sparkly rave gear, and a few, in keeping with the zoo theme, donned animal hats and masks. Time stamp: 6:49 a.m.
A $20 ticket to Morning Gloryville gets you the following: three hugs upon entry (one from each of the Morning Gloryville crew), a plastic lei, and three and a half hours of dancing. There's a smoothie bar, where smoothies are $6-a-pop and juices run $9, and you can purchase Brooklyn Roasting Co. coffee for around $2-$3, if you so desire. Massages are available for a "suggested donation," and crews were leading soggy yoga classes every 5 to 10 minutes on the Zoo's rainy roof.
The dancing, though, was Morning Gloryville's real bread-and-butter, with DJs blaring house music that reverberated all the way down Bogart Street. The Zoo—which was packed by 7:30 a.m.—boasted a bouncy floor and trampoline, and attendees were all over it, climbing walls, doing handstands and flipping from a rope swing in the middle of the room. The Zoo's garage doors were open, and passersby kept stopping to snap photos of the dozens of grown-ass adults in sequins doing pike jumps and tossing giant blow-up balls around the faux-graffitied wall.
Morning Gloryville advertises itself as a pre-work "sober rave," a description that stressed me out initially—how does one survive a strobe-light dance party without intoxicants? Is it appropriate to spike a mango smoothie? Can you blog on an Ecstasy comedown? But those concerns were all for naught, because what Morning Gloryville really is, is a $20 gym class, designed to pump you with endorphins before you move into your cubicle for the day. I prefer running in circles around Maria Hernandez Park but, hey, everybody's doing their own thing.
The next edition Morning Gloryville goes down on August 13th at 6:30 a.m.; buy your tickets online.
