Dancing at 8AM

There’s a movement happening. Not metaphorically - literally.

In London and other cities, people are gathering in the morning to dance. Rave cafes. Morning discos. No alcohol, no 3am comedown - just bodies moving together in the early light.

It turns out a lot of people want to dance. They just prefer to take the energy home with them.

I find this quietly revolutionary.

When play happens matters

Most of us have been conditioned to think of play as something that comes after. After work. After obligations. After we’ve earned it. By which point, more often than not, we’re too tired to do anything real - and we end up staring at a screen.

Scrolling feels like free time. But it rarely leaves us recharged. Real play - the active kind, the participatory kind, where you’re inside it rather than just watching it go by - does something completely different. It gives you energy instead of taking it away.

The shift from consumer to creator is one of the most important steps any of us can make. And it starts earlier in the day than we think.

Moving to think

We all have different play personalities - innate preferences, or ones developed when we were small.
Some people play with ideas.
Some with their hands.
Some with other people.
But there’s one thing I keep coming back to: for many of us, the body leads.
We need to move to think.

This is what we honour at Giocosamente with the 8am playful movement session.

It starts soft. Gentle. Nobody is expected to arrive fully awake or fully willing. We ease in. And then - reliably, every time - something shifts. The energy builds. People connect. Laughter happens before anyone has decided to be funny. And the whole rest of the day carries that charge.

It’s not obligatory. But I’ll tell you this: the people who come to that session tend to have a very different festival.

Giocosamente is not a night owl’s festival

Giocosamente isn’t built for people who stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning. It’s built for people who want to live the day fully. Who find joy in the morning, in movement, in connection, in being genuinely present rather than recovering from the night before.

If that’s you - or if that’s who you want to be - this is your place.

What actually happens here

Alongside the 8am session, the festival is full of playful workshops, artistic workshops, and creative workshops. Holistic practitioners, artists, facilitators, movement teachers - people who hold space beautifully and generously. You choose what you want to attend. You follow your curiosity.

The plenary sessions give the whole thing its shape and soul. Without them you might feel a little lost - they’re the heartbeat of the festival, the shared thread that makes everything else make sense.

Three vegan meals a day. Nutritious, abundant, light. The kind of food that doesn’t weigh you down - that leaves the body free to do what it does best: give you energy. Being under the trees. Being in nature. Sharing smiles with people you didn’t know a day ago.

It resets something. That something that not much else can reach.

Nine months

I remember Maria Costanza telling me, after her first Giocosamente, that the effects lasted nine months.

Nine months.

I wasn’t surprised. When you get a real charge of aliveness — not stimulation, not distraction, but actual living energy - it doesn’t evaporate on Monday morning. It goes with you. It changes how you move through the world.

Look around. People are tired. Battered, even. Maybe you are too. There are plenty of surface-level festivals and activities out there that offer a temporary lift and not much more.

This isn’t that.

One last thing

We don’t think about our childhoods enough. About what it felt like to play without worrying. To laugh without a reason. To move without it being exercise.

All of that is still in you. It hasn’t gone anywhere.

It’s just waiting for the right space. A morning. A circle of people. A tree. An 8am invitation to dance.

If you enjoyed this article, let me know in the comments — and if you feel the call of the morning, there are still Early Bird spots and a few bungalows available. Come and dance with us at 8.

👉 [Find out more and register — Giocosamente Festival 2026]

14-19 July, Central Italy