The Ladies and Old Men recover the Dance of Sogra and Nora

TarragonaSogra y Nora is a secular dance of a satirical nature that was first documented in 1877 and has as its central plot the differences between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law; it brings to light the intimacies of a home and the roles played by its inhabitants and visitors. The Damas y Viejos de Tarragona have adapted and updated the text that is kept in the Archdiocesan Historical Archive of Tarragona and will premiere on March 8th within the framework of the events for Working Women's Day with the support and collaboration of the Tarragona City Council.

The Sogra y Nora Dance will have four performances in the street, on the Paseo de las Palmeras, at 12:00, 13:00, 17:00 and 18:00. There will also be a performance at the Virgen de la Merced senior citizens' residence exclusively for residents and family members at 11 in the morning.

The Mother-in-law and Nora Dance The dance presented by Dames i Vells largely preserves the structure of the original manuscript, but updates both its content and the character's attitude. The instructive and sexist background gives way, in the new proposal, to a text with a marked social component, in which women are empowered and sisterhood takes center stage. Performed by twelve actresses who are members of the Dames i Vells association, the satirical verses of the dance address issues such as the role of women within the home, the workload that falls on the mother-in-law, the wage differences between men and women, irregular work and the disregard for women's health.

Oriol Grau, director of the spoken dance, explains that "the recovery of Sogra and Nora is an added value for the cultural heritage of Tarragona and we are especially pleased to do so beyond the Santa Tecla festivities, enriching the celebration of Working Women's Day with a cultural and popular proposal." Grau, who is also the master of the Dames y Vells dance, highlights that "in Sogra and Nora you will find a different tone of Dames y Vells, since the whole team has managed to find a humor with a different color."

A final degree project

The idea of bringing back Sogra and Nora arose within the entity in 2019, as a result of the concern of its members to recover a spoken dance. In this context, Eva Rofin's final degree project in Catalan Language and Literature, entitled Mother-in-law and Nora, one calls and the other cries. Linguistic study of the spoken dance of Sogra and Nora from Tarragona (URV, 2014), which carries out a linguistic analysis of a manuscript kept in the Archdiocesan Historical Archive. Rofin's work in bringing this manuscript to light has been essential in the recovery of the spoken dance and the author has expressed that "it is an incredible gift to see how the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law have ended up coming to life at the hands of Damas y Viejos de Tarragona".

The Covid pandemic meant that from 2020 to 2022 Dames i Vells could not continue with the work of recovering the dance and it was in 2023, after the Santa Tecla festivities, that the proposal gained momentum. During 2024, the text was updated, the costumes were made, the musical composition, the choreographies and an intense rehearsal schedule were carried out.