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Gumboot dance
African dance / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The gumboot dance (or Isicathulo[1]) is a South African dance that is performed by dancers wearing wellington boots. In South Africa these are more commonly called gumboots.
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The boots may be embellished with bells, so that they ring as the dancers stamp on the ground. This sound would be a code or a different calling to say something to another person a short distance away. This was used to communicate in the mines as there was strictly no talking otherwise there would be severe, drastic punishments at the discretion of their superior.[citation needed] The mines were very noisy workplaces, with pneumatic drills at work most of the time; in those days (until the mid 1970s) ear-defenders did not exist in South African mines.