For the first time in the Corpus procession the girls will appear dancing. It will not be the first time that the women of Oñati perform Corpus dances – they did it in the 1940s and 1950s – but it will be the first in Corpus.

The Oñatz dance group started the process of encouraging the participation of women two years ago. An operative group was then created that would have played this role, consisting of both women and men. And this year they will explain what they have done in this process. There will also be women at the Corpus Christi procession. However, de-emphasizing this, they say that in the traditional way there will be nine dancers on Sunday, removing the label of the genre. We give importance to the dancers. As usual, there will be nine, but not all will be boys,” says Miren Aramburu of Oñatz.

In addition to the Sunday procession, there will be a woman among the dancers every day of the weekend. They have been studying and rehearsing Corpus dances for about a year and a half. In fact, so far, the task has been to help the dancers during the Corpus weekend, to raise money, to help them with dance material and to do things like that. This year they had to work on the subject of women’s clothing. And after being with the experts, they say that they have not had to make any extra changes in this field. "We've tried to be as equal as possible. We have only changed the trousers, but it will not be noticeable from the outside, we have adapted them to the female complexion", explains Irati Aranburu.

Twenty Dancers

For the dancers, however, the Corpusas are not limited to the Sunday procession. They operate throughout the weekend in local schools, neighborhoods and streets. And so that makes them have to alternate dances. Apart from the nine Sunday dancers, the group is also involved in other dance performances. Twenty dancers are expected to perform in the coming days. "The whole weekend is special. On Christmas morning we walk around neighborhoods and farms raising money and in the afternoon, in schools and on the street. In Zapatu, we dance and collect money in the streets of the town in the morning and in the afternoon in the Plaza de los Fueros,” says Iulene Urrutia, from the Oñatz dance group.

The result of the process started two years ago will be seen over the weekend and the dancers of Oñate are looking forward to it, as Zuriñe Lazkano has pointed out: "Very little is missing. We are very nervous and happy at the same time and very satisfied with the work done, even if it has been a long time."

This news has been published by Goiena and we have brought it to LUZ thanks to the CC-by-sa license.