Max Pollak

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.

Of Pollak's performance at a 2013 concert in Orford, Canada, Steve Bergeron of Québec La Tribune wrote:

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 and Teatro Amadeo Roldan. He has since performed with members of both the Vienna Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic, and as a soloist in the Morton Gould Tap Dance Concerto with the Duluth Superior, East Texas and Plano Symphony Orchestras.

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.

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

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.

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. The international cast of musicians and dancers now consists of marimba, 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.

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

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 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 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. 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).

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.