Jon Swarthout from Treasure Valley Institute for Children’s Arts (TrICA) spent several weeks with our Grade 3 students as part of their Unit of Inquiry, How We Express Ourselves. The students learned that dance is a form of expressing oneself and a way to tell a story. They focused on the South African Gumboot Dance, which represents the Gumboot dance of the South African male slaves who were taken from their families and made to work in the poison waters of the gold mines during apartheid. The slaves were made to wear gumboots (rubber boots) and used the slapping and stomping to 1) communicate with each other in the mine as they were not allowed to talk and 2) as entertainment and spirit-lifting once they returned to the camps. The dances were even used as publicity for the mine owners because they believed it showed that they were treating the miners well.
To round out their unit and integrate other subjects, our children drew bodies in motion in art, wrote expository paragraphs about the history of the gumboot dance, and read about other dance traditions across other cultures.
The open house for this unit was the kids’ dance performance and it was spectacular! Congratulations to the kids and thanks to Jon Swarthout!
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