Rise, shine and rave: Daybreaker in Times Square fights loneliness one sunrise dance at a time | amNewYork

Hundreds of people gather at One Times Square at 7 a.m. for Daybreaker, a bi-monthly early-morning dance event. The event began in 2013, and Eli Clark-Davis joined as a volunteer and later became a full-time producer. He describes how attending Daybreaker changed his relationship with nightlife by offering a way to party in the morning without harming his body. Daybreaker locations vary frequently and include events worldwide, such as the Pyramids of Gaza, the Sydney Opera House, Antarctica, and the White House, with large crowds in San Francisco. New formats like the sauna rave were created to keep the community engaged and constantly imagining what it wants next.

"At 7 a.m. on a Friday, while most of the city is still asleep, there are hundreds of people on top of One Times Square dancing up a storm at a bi-monthly event called Daybreaker. It's the first time this crew has gathered underneath the world-famous ball that drops every New Year's Eve, but Daybreaker is full of joyful regulars (and newbies) who frequently find themselves part of a new tradition in partying."

"And by the end of my first Daybreaker, I was completely in love with it. Like, I could go to this every morning, but I can't go out every night. That's just not something that would feel good for me or my body. So I saw right from the very first one that this truly was going to shift culture."

"The location changes frequently, and there are Daybreaker events all over the country and world. I produced one at the Pyramids of Gaza, he proudly notes. We've done the Sydney Opera House, Antarctica, the White House. The one in San Francisco had 5,000 people. I'd love to do one at the Statue of Liberty."

"We invented the sauna rave last January, Clark-Davis informs us. I think it's about keeping things fresh and new and constantly imagining what our community wants."

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