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

Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and became known for his work in

percussive dance A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exclu ...

, World Music,

tap dance Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm (jazz) tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses on dance; it is widely perfo ...

, 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 Los Muñequitos de Matanzas is a Cuban rumba ensemble from the city of Matanzas. The group was established in 1952 as Conjunto Guaguancó Matancero and released their first LP in 1956 through Puchito. Since then, Los Muñequitos have continued to p ...

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

Early life

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. :"I however did some self-teaching. My parents bought me some shoes in a dance wear store. I also caught a little bit of an instructional TV show that was on just for a few months. So I would watch regularly whatever came on, whether it was Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire, and I would end up imitating whatever I saw on TV." 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-ol
Carnell Lyons
Lyons, a Kansas City-born childhood friend of

Charlie Parker Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form ...

, became Pollak's mentor.

Education

Pollak studied theater at

Theater an der Wien The is a historic theatre in Vienna located on the Left Wienzeile in the Mariahilf district. Completed in 1801, the theatre has hosted the premieres of many celebrated works of theatre, opera, and symphonic music. Since 2006, it has served prima ...

Musical Theater School in

Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

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. In the United States, he studied Jazz at

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

, graduating in May 1995. Teachers included the jazz drummers

Charlie Persip Charles Lawrence Persip (July 26, 1929 – August 23, 2020), known as Charli Persip and formerly as Charlie Persip (he changed the spelling of his name to Charli in the late 1960s), was an American jazz drummer. Biography Born in Morristown, N ...

and Vernell Fournier, and the pianists

Ted Rosenthal Ted Rosenthal (born 1959) is an American jazz pianist. He was featured on David Sanborn's series '' Night Music'', and has performed worldwide, both as a leader and as a sideman with many jazz greats, including Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Phil W ...

, 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 Phil Black is an Australian CNN International freelance reporter, based in London. Black joined CNN in April 2007 and covers stories around Europe. In 2008 he was part of CNN's team covering the Russian-Georgian conflict, which broke out over sepa ...

), theater dance (Robert Tucker, Chris Chadman), and diverse tap styles with recognized masters (

Savion Glover Savion Glover (born November 19, 1973) is an American tap dancer, actor, and choreographer. Early life The youngest of three sons, Glover was born to a white father, who left the family before he was born, and a black mother. Glover's great grand ...

, Bob Audy, Lesley Lockery,

Career

Musical theatre

Pollak began his professional career performing in musical theater in Europe. Highlights include ''Deutschland Lied'' (1989) at Sartory Theater in Köln, directed by

Jürgen Flimm Jürgen Flimm (born 17 July 1941, in Gießen) is a German theater and opera director, and theater manager. After establishing himself as one of the exponents of Regietheater, Flimm was called to manage renowned theaters and festivals. His operatic ...

and choreographed by Michael Shawn. He also appeared with the original company of Eric Woolfson's musical

Freudiana ''Freudiana'' is a rock opera by Eric Woolfson. It was to be the 11th album by the Alan Parsons Project, but during its development, Woolfson had creative differences with Alan Parsons. The production, released in 1990, utilizes the Project ...

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 ''Brigadoon'' is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, and music by Frederick Loewe. The song " Almost Like Being in Love", from the musical, has become a standard. It features two American tourists who stumble upon Brigadoon, a ...

'', ''Chicago'', '' Meet Me in St. Louis'', and '' A Chorus Line''; and regionally at th
Downtown Cabaret Theater
Bridgeport, CT in ''The All Night Strut!'' (1995).

Manhattan Tap, Feet 2 the Beat, Beat the Donkey and Urban Tap

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 ''Beat the Donkey'' is an album by percussionist Cyro Baptista, which marked the debut of his rotating percussion and dance ensemble that would become known as Beat the Donkey, which was released on the Tzadik label in 2002.Deanna's, together with his close friends

Tamango ''Tamango'' is a 1958 France, French/Italy, Italian film directed by John Berry (film director), John Berry, a Hollywood Blacklist, blacklisted United States, American director who exiled himself to Europe. The film stars Dorothy Dandridge, Curd ...

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 Buster Brown is a comic-strip character created in 1902 by Richard F. Outcault. Adopted as the mascot of the Brown Shoe Company in 1904, Buster Brown, along with Mary Jane, and with his dog Tige, became well known to the United States of America ...

Chuck Green Charles Green (November 6, 1919 – March 7, 1997) was an American tap dancer. Green was born in Fitzgerald, Georgia. He would stick bottle caps on his bare feet as a child and tap dance on the sidewalk for money. He won third place in a dance ...

, and Lon Chaney. Performances included a collaboration at

Lincoln Center Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...

with jazz bass legend Ray Brown. In 2004, he was featured on Cyro Baptista's Beat the Donkey Beat.

RumbaTap

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

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.
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 Bobby Sanabria (born June 2, 1957) is an American drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, producer, educator, activist, radio show host of Puerto Rican descent who specializes in jazz and Latin jazz. Biography Sanabria was born in the South ...

, Barbaro Ramos, and Paul Carlon's Latin jazz quartet Grupo Los Santos. The international cast of musicians and dancers now consists of

marimba The marimba () is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the timbre ...

, a saxophone trio, vocalists and a percussion section led by six body-drumming tap dancers. Since 2010 RumbaTap also performs as an a cappella vocal ensemble. RumbaTap has since toured throughout Europe, Japan, Cuba, Brazil, Turkey, Canada and the United States, in 2008 performing to a capacity crowd at New York City's Central Park Summer Stage.

Cuba

In 2001, Pollak received a grant from Arts International to help establish Cuba's first tap festival in Havana. Traveling with Pollak were Paul Carlon's quartet of virtuosic jazz musicians who performed with Cuban jazz musicians led by

Chucho Valdez Chucho is a given name. Notable people with the name include: *Chucho Avellanet (born 1941), Puerto Rican singer and comedic actor * Christian Benítez (1986–2013), Ecuadorian footballer nicknamed 'Chucho' *Chucho Castillo (born 1944), former Mex ...

Classical music

In 2011, he began working to make European and South American classical music more accessible by playing with classical ensembles in prestigious venues such as Vienna's Konzerthaus and Musikverein and Havana's

Teatro Nacional Teatro may refer to: * Theatre * Teatro (band), musical act signed to Sony BMG * Teatro (Willie Nelson album), ''Teatro'' (Willie Nelson album), 1998 * Teatro (Draco Rosa album), ''Teatro'' (Draco Rosa album), 2008 {{disambiguation ...

and Teatro Amadeo Roldan. He has since performed with members of both the

Vienna Philharmonic The Vienna Philharmonic (VPO; german: Wiener Philharmoniker, links=no) is an orchestra that was founded in 1842 and is considered to be one of the finest in the world. The Vienna Philharmonic is based at the Musikverein in Vienna, Austria. It ...

and New York Philharmonic, and as a soloist in the

Morton Gould Morton Gould (December 10, 1913February 21, 1996) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, and pianist. Biography Morton Gould was born in Richmond Hill, New York, United States. He was recognized early as a child prodigy with abilities ...

Tap Dance Concerto with the Duluth Superior, East Texas and Plano Symphony Orchestras. Of Pollak's performance at a 2013 concert in Orford, Canada, Steve Bergeron of Québec ''La Tribune'' wrote: :"The breathtaking Rumba Tap dancer Max Pollak, and Les Violons du Roy directed by Jean-François Rivest, electrified the 62nd Festival Orford ‘s opening concert on Saturday night at the Salle Gilles Lefebvre." (''The Tchaïkovski Experience'': Orford Festival, 13 May 2013) : :

Teaching

* University of Minnesota Dance: Visiting Artist and Scholar Endowment in Dance, 2008 * Sarah Lawrence College: Faculty * The Rock at 32nd Street, in Phoenix, AZ: Free class and Concert—with Grupo Los Santos, 5 October 2013 *

American Tap Dance Foundation The American Tap Dance Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose primary goal is the presentation and teaching of tap dance. Its original stated purpose was to provide an "international home for tap dance, perpetuate tap as a contemporary art ...

/Tap City (New York City Tap Festival)
artist in residence
rhythm tap training and enrichment for advanced professional tap dancers—ongoing 2001–present

As an author

* "Global Tap: Shuffle off to Buffalo, Bosnia, and Beyond", ''Dance Magazine'', May 2007 * "The Real Jimmy Slyde", ''International Tap Association Newsletter'' 8, May–June 1997

Personal life

In 1996, Pollak married Broadway actress Mary Illes. In 2002, their daughter Caroline was born.

Awards and nominations

* 2016 Flo-Bert Award winner * 2011 Hoofer Award winner * 2011 Bessie Award nominee * 2010 Individual Artist Grantee of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance * 2008 Fellow in Choreography from the New York Foundation of the Arts * 2007 ''Dance Magazine's "25 to Watch"

List of concerts

Stage performances

New York

– Jazz at Lincoln Center, Alice Tully Hall, Meet The Artist :* RumbaTap, Manhattan Tap, Feet 2 The Beat, Beat The Donkey (1995–2008) :* Soloist w/ Cyro Baptista; Ray Brown,

Danilo Perez Danilo is a given name found in Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Serbian. Notable people with the name Danilo include: Athletes Footballers * Danilo (footballer, born 1979), Brazilian footballer Danilo de Andrade * Danilo (footballer, born 19 ...

, John DiMartino, Yosvany Terry, Dafnis Prieto, Bobby Sanabria's Quarteto Aché * Central Park Summer Stage :*RumbaTap (2008) :*Beat The Donkey (2000) * Joyce Theater :*RumbaTap (2005) Urban Tap (2002) * Joyce Soho :
RumbaTap
(2007, 2006) * Doris Duke Theater :* RumbaTap (2001–2007) Dejelaba Groove (2005) Global Jam (2004); :* Tap City (2001–2007) * New Victory Theater * Urban Tap (2001) *

Public Theater The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as the Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers.Epstein, Helen. ''Joe Papp: An American Li ...

: Global Fest w/ Roxane Butterfly (2006) *

Symphony Space Symphony Space, founded by Isaiah Sheffer and Allan Miller, is a multi-disciplinary performing arts organization at 2537 Broadway on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Performances take place in the 760-seat Peter Jay Sharp Theatre (also called Pe ...

* RumbaTap (2008, 2007) Jazz Nativity in the role of the Third King usually played by Jimmy Slyde w/ Paquito D'Rivera, Slide Hampton, Dave Valentin (2005) * Town Hall * Barry Harris Spring Concert w/ Jimmy Slyde (2002) Super Son Cubano w/ Jose Fajardo, J.P. Torres (1999) Manhattan Tap (1992) * Tribeca Arts Center * Lost Jazz Shrines featuring Phil Woods, Roxane Butterfly (2008) *

92nd Street Y 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a cultural and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, at the corner of East 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Founded in 1874 as the Young Men's Hebrew Association, the ...

* Kathak Ensemble (2006) * La Mama

References

External links

*
International Body Music Festival

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pollak, Max Austrian choreographers 1970 births Living people Austrian percussionists Musicians from Vienna