Growing up dancing polka and other Central European folk dances; then moving to Oregon and hanging out with a lot of Mexicans who danced; and then learning Argentine folk dances, you can see how many parts of the Americas received immigrants from the same areas of Europe.
Chamamé is a good example of this. To me, it is quintessential polka-like bar dancing :-)
Dance chart
This is the only dance we've learned that won't bring up a dance chart like the other three: if you can polka or waltz, you can chamame. I'll put up a few videos that show the variants we talked about in class. Really, I think we spent ten minutes teaching this dance (as opposed to more than an hour for zamba). All you tango dancers and folk dancers got in the spirit and went for it!
Dance videos
Do you want ALL the information about this dance? Here it is. Warning, it's about 20 minutes long!
Here's what we looked like, more or less.
This is my favorite, so far!
Did you want to see it with zapateo? Here it is!
Here's a video of a chamame festival, with comments by bystanders and dancers (in Spanish).
Go dance!
Music to dance
Kilometro 11: This is one of the songs we used for class.