Line Dancing, Flamenco and Yoga Fill One New School Basement Room

Emerson Fleurant, Capri Lico and Anna Bolla started the Concrete Cowboys in August 2025, three third-year fashion design students at Parsons who had spent the summer at Hill Country's Tuesday line dancing nights in Midtown. The first meeting was August 28. The New School Free Press sat in during midterms week that fall, counted about thirteen people on the floor, and reported the club had not missed a week since.

A night opens with a warm-up, then the three founders take turns teaching. A new dance takes fifteen to thirty minutes, broken into pieces and called from the front of the room. "Scuff, twist, pivot, stomp!" Pitbull and rap carry most of the routines. "It's really not as country as people make it out to be," Lico told the paper.

Regulars bring people who have never tried it. "The friend that I brought today, it's her first time dancing," one member told the Free Press. The listing says beginners are welcome.

The club ran on Thursdays last year and has moved to Monday evenings for this one. This is the only session of the three with no cap on numbers. One thing to square before you go: the club's own page says Mondays run 8 to 10, while the calendar books this date at a single hour, the same as every other meeting the club has scheduled this term.

Luli teaches Wednesday at six. The hour goes to rhythm and arm technique first, which keeps the entry gentle for anyone whose feet have never done this.

Luli Bono is a singer and composer from Madrid. She spent six years at Amor de Dios, the flamenco academy there, working through baile, compás, cante and palos, and she toured Spain with her album Toma K Toma before coming to The New School to study songwriting. Her framing treats the form as a way into the music, the lyrics and the people around it. Flamenco shoes help, short heels do the same job, and neither is required.

The Dance Collective runs the class with Recreation and Commuter Engagement. Twenty RSVP spots open for this date.

Julia comes at vinyasa from anatomy. She threads functional exercises and science-based stretches through the asana, and the hour is built for strength and resilience that holds up past the mat.

Julia Brawley found yoga while training in acting and dance at AMDA. She did her teacher training at Yogamaya in Manhattan and teaches weekly vinyasa and stretch classes there, and she is finishing a BFA in musical theatre at The New School.

The Narwhal Yoga Club programs weekly classes with certified instructors and pairs yoga with meditation across the semester. Past terms have run Iyengar, Yin and Vinyasa Flow, and the club says any level of experience fits. This one also opens twenty spots, and the RSVP form will not let you bring a guest.

All three run through NarwhalNation, the university's student engagement portal, and the listings behind them share the same switches. None is invite-only. None sets an access code. None lets you add a guest to an RSVP.

The listings say nothing about who can come or what it costs, which is the part worth settling before you turn up. The university puts it on the Recreation page: signing up for its programs takes enrollment in a New School degree program, a valid NewCard and proof of health insurance. These are campus sessions.

Two forms sit behind the door itself. The room is locked, and the Fitness Room Agreement Form is what gets an ID working on it. Student Life asks students to request that access ahead of time, or to walk in with the group leader running the session. The form was reissued in June, so access carried over from last year has to be filed again. Every student in a fitness class signs the fitness waiver as well, and that one covers the whole schedule, flamenco hour and yoga hour alike.

The university counts its group fitness classes as free. No listing names a price, and none of the three carries a ticket tier.

• The room is the Narwhal Fitness Room, UL205, on Lower Level 2 of the University Center at 63 Fifth Avenue
• Lower Level 2 sits two floors below the street, so leave a few extra minutes the first time
• Take either elevator down to Lower Level 2, turn left where the Fitness Room signs start, then right to the end of the hallway; the room is behind two glass doors
• Two of the three listings link the same short video showing how to find the room
• Union Square sits a few blocks east, which puts the 4, 5, 6, L, N, Q, R and W within walking distance
• Recreation and Commuter Engagement runs the space and also programs team sports, outdoor trips and other group fitness classes
• The Dance Collective books the same room on other days for barre, hip-hop, Tahitian, salsa and bachata, so the weekly schedule is worth a look if these three dates do not fit
• Outside class hours the room is open for unguided use whenever the University Center is open, for students who already hold ID access to it

The New School Free Press called it a notoriously neglected fitness room in the basement, below seven floors of classrooms, lecture halls and sewing studios. That came in a story about the line dancing club that took the space over, and the same piece calls the room secluded.

The university teaches out of buildings scattered around Greenwich Village, so the building name is the detail to get right. All three of these are in the University Center, and between Monday night and Thursday afternoon that basement gets used three different ways.