TORONTO -- Forget Gumboots for just a minute.

At Tuesday night's opening of the South African rhythm-fest, Canadian audiences trekking to the Pantages might have been more appreciative of an art form that found something -- anything -- artistically compelling in snowboots.

But forget the snow. Gumboots falls firmly into the ever-expanding genre of world beat music -- and here, the emphasis is most definitely on the 'beat.'

As its title implies, the primary focus of Gumboots is that ubiquitous footwear -- known in other climes as Wellingtons or simply Wellies -- favoured by puddle-jumpers the world over.

Of course, puddle jumping isn't their only use -- and in South Africa in the days of apartheid, gumboots were pressed into service by the white owners of goldmines when it was discovered that they presented a cheap alternative to underground pumps.

Instead of pumping out the water that flowed into the mines, owners simply issued gumboots to the black miners who worked the pits. Small comfort for labourers who were often chained to work stations and forbidden to speak by owners to whom profit, not humanity, was the primary consideration.

Not even blatant racism and avarice, it turns out, could dim the power of the human imagination. Black miners soon established a highly musical communication, based on tribal rhythms slapped out on the sides of their footwear.

With the end of apartheid, that unique form of music has now emerged as some sort of latter-day folk art, slickly and often stylishly presented here by a group of 10 dancers and four musicians, all choreographed by the Rishile Gumboot Dancers of Soweto and by Zenzi Mbuli, who also directs this polished production.

As theatre, it's not totally unfamiliar turf, conjuring as it does aural memories of shows like Stomp and Tapdogs, where artists weave 'found rhythms' into compelling theatre. There's little revolutionary in the way Gumboots' artists find a powerful, throbbing beat in the stamping of their feet and the slapping of their boots.

What sets Gumboots apart -- and in some ways, above -- other similar shows is the often haunting music that rides the pulse of that created beat.

In songs like The Man Who Stole The Sun, Amazinyo Amhlophe (A Woman With A Set Of White Teeth), I'm Too Sexy and Ma-Gumede (Keep Me Strong, Give Me Long Life), they create, in a mere 90 minutes, a moving portrait of a people who found great joy in life, even while they mourn the loss of their freedom and their dignity. In this, they enjoy the full complicity of lighting designer Gavin Norris and his inspired evocations.

Maybe they could teach us some way to make snowboots more endurable.

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