Max Pollak

Max Pollak (born 1970) is percussive dancer and World Music expert.

He was born in Vienna, Austria and became known for his work in percussive dance, World Music, tap dance, and choreography.

He created "RumbaTap", which merged American Rhythm Tap with Afro-Cuban music and dance.

He is the only non-Cuban member of the Afro-Cuban Rumba and folklore ensemble Los Muñequitos de Matanzas.

Max was born in Vienna, Austria on 1 September 1970.

He has started tapping when, at the age of five, he watched Fred Astaire "finesse his way across the screen of the family television set."

Tap lessons, however, were not available; in Austria, there was only classical ballet for a youth hungry to learn to dance.

At eleven, he started taking official dance lessons, and at 14, he learned to play the drums and percussion.

He was first exposed to the African American style of rhythm tap when he was 17 years old and met 71-year-old Carnell Lyons.

Lyons, a Kansas City-born childhood friend of Charlie Parker, became Pollak's mentor.

Pollak studied theater at Theater an der Wien Musical Theater School in Vienna, Austria from 1988–1990 and moved to New York in 1991 at the invitation of Heather Cornell, artistic director of the Bebop tap quartet Manhattan Tap.

Highlights include Deutschland Lied (1989) at Sartory Theater in Köln, directed by Jürgen Flimm and choreographed by Michael Shawn.

He also appeared with the original company of Eric Woolfson's musical Freudiana at Theatre an der Wien.

After moving to the United States in 1991, he appeared Off Broadway in the Wings Theater production of The Nutcracker in the Land of Nuts (1991); summer stock—at Surflight Theater, NJ (1992) in Brigadoon, Chicago, Meet Me in St. Louis, and A Chorus Line; and regionally at the Downtown Cabaret Theater, Bridgeport, CT in The All Night Strut! (1995).

Pollak also used the move to New York to launch his career with a variety of Tap-based dance troupes.

These included "Manhattan Tap", "Feet 2 the Beat", "Beat the Donkey", and "Urban Tap".

He co-hosted a weekly tap jam session at the East Village club Deanna's, together with his close friends Tamango of Urban Tap, Roxane Butterfly of Worldbeats, and saxophonist/composer Paul Carlon.

He also appeared regularly at New York City jazz club La Cave with Dr. Jimmy Slyde, Dr. Buster Brown, Chuck Green, and Lon Chaney.

Performances included a collaboration at Lincoln Center with jazz bass legend Ray Brown.

In the United States, he studied Jazz at The New School, graduating in May 1995.

Teachers included the jazz drummers Charlie Persip and Vernell Fournier, and the pianists Ted Rosenthal, Lee Musiker, and Phil Markovitz (music theory, arrangement).

To develop his versatility as a dancer, Pollak studied ballet (Jan Miller), jazz dance (Daniel Tinazzi, Phil Black), theater dance (Robert Tucker, Chris Chadman), and diverse tap styles with recognized masters (Savion Glover, Bob Audy, Lesley Lockery, Phil Black).

Pollak began his professional career performing in musical theater in Europe.

RumbaTap, the music/dance ensemble created and named after Pollak's unique body percussion/tap concept, premiered in 1999.

It was hailed as "... a stylistically satisfying blend of polyrhythms and percussive landscapes" and "infectiously charming ..."

It was officially launched at a show in 1999 at El Taller Latino Americano, featuring Bobby Sanabria, Barbaro Ramos, and Paul Carlon's Latin jazz quartet Grupo Los Santos.

In 2004, he was featured on Cyro Baptista's Beat the Donkey Beat.

The ideas behind RumbaTap began when Max took a class with Afro-Latin jazz icon Bobby Sanabria at the New School: “It changed my life,” Pollak recalls.

“We played in a big band, and I had to play different instruments and learn as much as I possibly could.” The learning process included watching videos of Afro-Cuban traditional music, including performances by legends Los Muñequitos de Matanzas.

“That really struck a chord.

I told Bobby I was a tap dancer and that I wanted to tap dance to this music.

He asked me if I wanted to tap dance to Cuban music, or tap dance Cuban music.

Then he reached for the claves,”—the rhythmic base of Afro-Cuban music—“and said, ‘You have to play claves while you dance;’” a feat that sounds easier on paper than in reality.

Pollak practiced doing just that, drawing on his drummer's ability to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Eventually he mastered the approach and took it to the stage at the Nuyorican Poets Café.

There, he had another life-changing encounter: He met Los Muñequitos de Matanzas and one of their finest rumba dancers, Barbaro Ramos, asked Pollak to teach him to tap.

“We met in a studio, and I brought along an old pair of my tap shoes.

I said 'This is how you play cascara on the side of the drum.

This is how you do it with your feet.' He was immediately able to reproduce what I was doing," Pollak reflects. "I thought, 'If this guy can learn the basic gist of tap dancing so fast, this is worth my energy.' I taught him for a couple of hours, and then told him 'Keep the shoes.'" A couple months later they met up in New York and Ramos performed a "mindblowing" tap solo on stage.

For the 19th and early 20th centurygraphic artist, Max Pollak, see http://www.artnet.com/artists/max-pollak/