How do you like to start your day?
The Show recently met some folks who get moving bright and early.
SAM DINGMAN: It’s about 7 a.m., and a woman named Thais is at a dance party.
THAIS: Honestly, I really like the idea of waking up and dancing.
DINGMAN: So, does Thais’s friend, Scott.
SCOTT: Normally I drink coffee in the morning — but I could just dance instead!

DINGMAN: Daybreaker is the brainchild of Radha Agrawal.
RADHA AGRAWAL: Dance is the most healing technology that exists.
DINGMAN: Back in the 2010s, Agrawal was an entrepreneur, an investor, and — as she puts it — a self-conscious dancer. Until one night at Burning Man, the annual festival of art and self-reliance held in the Nevada desert. Her friends had gone to bed, and she decided to go for a bike ride.
AGRAWAL: I found this art car that was playing this music. And I’ll never forget, closing my eyes, and just getting into my body for the first time. And just having this moment of tearful remembering. Reconnecting my mind and my body together for the first time. I remember crying, and feeling the music in my body and my bones.
DINGMAN: Agrawal says the experience was revelatory for two reasons. One: Unlike a lot of people at Burning Man, she was completely sober. And two: It happened just before dawn.
AGRAWAL: The euphoric feeling of this moment of sun rising into a new day, as I got to move my body, and got to feel the music, and come home to my self-expression … it was truly one of the most awakening experiences of my entire life.
DINGMAN: I have to say that phrase “tearful remembering” really jumps out at me. What do you think you had forgotten?
AGRAWAL: I think we live in a neck-down, cut-off society, where we out-think and out emotion ourselves through our minds. Our body holds all the wisdom, our bodies remembers everything of our past. And so the remembering was moving from headspace to a reconnection of body mindspace.
DINGMAN: When Agrawal got back from Burning Man, she started thinking: Maybe there was a way to inspire a collective tearful remembering. She felt like dance had been relegated to boozy nightclubs and one-off events like weddings.
AGRAWAL: … rather than a weekly or monthly practice with your community, to move your body and your mind to states of celebration. You know, the American way, back in the '50s, you would put your briefcase down, you would take your apron off and you would go to the dance hall. That’s what we did as Americans.
DINGMAN: And so, in 2013, Agrawal and a friend came up with a vision to make dance great again.
AGRAWAL: You know, can we turn nightlife on its head by throwing dance parties in the morning? What if we replace the mean bouncers with a hugging committee? What if we replace the alcohol with green juice? What if we replace the DJ pushing buttons with a joyful DJ and break dancers and fire spinners in the morning? It was really a social experiment. It was an art project.
DINGMAN: Now, more than 10 years later, Agrawal’s social experiment has become Daybreaker. She stages events all over the world, first thing in the morning.
AGRAWAL: So Daybreaker actually starts with a one-hour yoga experience inside of an iconic venue. Imagine doing yoga with a piano or harpist or didgeridoo, with a bubble machine misting through the dance hall. Then the second two hours is a full on dance party — so imagine you’re in the sunlight dancing, and all of a sudden there’s a horn section and a break dancer - wow moments, we call them. And then we end with a closing reading.

DINGMAN: Agrawal sees Daybreaker as a kind of radical health care. An unholy hybrid of festival culture and wellness - without what she calls “the cheesiness.”
AGRAWAL: Wellness world can often feel pretty earnest, you know? And so, can we add the edge and the play and the mischief and the mystery?
DINGMAN: These days, there’s something else Agrawal thinks could use a little mischief: voting.
AGRAWAL: Civic engagement, currently today, is not a celebration. It feels like, when you go to vote, it’s like going to the DMV.
DINGMAN: This fall, Agrawal and her team are bringing Daybreaker to swing state cities like Philadelphia, Ann Arbor and Kenosha. They’re calling it the Purple Tour. The tag line? “Party to the polls.”
AGRAWAL: And the whole idea is to really reinvigorate the joy, the joy, of having a voice, of casting a ballot. Of shifting the energetics around the elections. We’re gonna basically throw an epic dance party next to the polling station, or closeby, and then pied piper everyone with a horn section and a drum line and flags and bubble machines and stilt walkers, all the way to the polling machines. We’re bringing poll dancers to every polling station.
DINGMAN: Recently, the Purple Tour came to Phoenix, and producer Kiersten Edgett was on the scene.
MARY: I’m an advocate for voting! This is amazing! Fun, non-partisan, food, music.
JOHN: This event combines three things I love: dancing, yoga and voting!
MADELYN: I think that voting is very important, and it matters to make your voice heard, and I wanted to bring some good energy to the polls …

DINGMAN: Later that morning, when Kiersten got back to the radio station, we sat down in the studio to debrief.
DINGMAN: When in the whole process did it become explicitly about voting? Like are you hearing about how important elections are while you’re doing shavassana?
KIERSTEN EDGETT: Actually yes. There was … there were a couple moments where like they’d be in a certain position, and stretching out, and she’d be like, “You know, your vote is really important, and it’s really powerful to own that right that you have as an American, and to use that. As somebody’s in like, downward dog, she’s like, “Remember your vote!”
DINGMAN: Listening to all this, I have to admit: the Purple Tour sounded a little — well, earnest.
EDGETT: It definitely came from a place of passion for wanting to get people out into polling booths. It was kind of ... loving in a way.
DINGMAN: Case in point: another guy Kiersten interviewed named Carlos.
CARLOS: It’s only made my beliefs in the country, and my nation, my USA, more firm. You know, I love the USA.
DINGMAN: Don’t get me wrong — there’s nothing wrong with love. But I wasn’t hearing much in the way of the edge and the playfulness and the mischief and the mystery. That is, until Carlos said this.
CARLOS: Life is good, you know? No matter how you vote, I think we’re gonna be OK.
DINGMAN: Given the political rhetoric of 2024, that might be the edgiest thing I’ve heard all year.
CARLOS: Let’s do it! Hallelujah!
