When he was five years old, Max Pollak had a moment. Sitting in front of a black-and-white television in suburban Vienna, he saw Fred Astaire tap dancing for the first time. “I was so spellbound by his elegance and his effortless swinging persona that I immediately decided I have to learn how to do that,” he remembers.
But there was one problem. In Vienna in the 1970s, there were no tap dance teachers. So Max started teaching himself—imitating what he saw on screen, tapping out rhythms on the floor. Improvisation wasn’t just part of the process—it was the process.
“I started just making stuff up. That ended up actually being a blessing because improvisation was my first access to this art form that I needed to learn somehow, and I just kind of taught myself by figuring something out,” recalls Max.
Eventually, Max did find a teacher—an American expat named Carnell Lyons, one of the few remaining legends of tap’s golden era. Lyons had left the U.S. during the civil rights movement and landed in Europe, where he took the teenage Pollak under his wing.
“This man was just the embodiment of groove and of hipness. He was just amazing. He blew my mind. He also took me under his wing and changed my life,” Max says.
Lyons had danced with the greats—he was childhood friends with Charlie Parker—and through him, Max began to understand tap not just as a dance, but as a cultural lineage, tied to Black history, jazz, and improvisation. That lens would shape his life.
When Max moved to New York in the '90s, he began studying Afro-Cuban music. The clave—the heartbeat of the Cuban rhythm—turned out to be the key he needed to unlock his own contribution.
He met and studied with Bobby Sanabria, the fiery percussionist and keeper of Afro-Cuban musical tradition. Max was already a drummer and tap dancer—but now he was asking bigger questions, and Bobby was there with an important one..
“I said, ‘I’m a tap dancer besides being a drummer and I’m looking for people who tap dance this stuff.’ And he said, ‘Well, there aren’t any.’ …Then he said, ‘Do you want to tap dance to Cuban music—or do you want to tap dance Cuban music?,’” recalls Max.
That distinction changed everything. It set Max on a lifelong journey to integrate tap, Afro-Caribbean rhythm, and movement into a single expressive form.
What came next was RumbaTap—a groundbreaking synthesis of tap dance, Afro-Cuban folklore, body percussion, and voice. And at the heart of it was a remarkable connection he made with Cuba’s legendary ensemble, Los Muñequitos de Matanzas.
He remembers: “They saw me dance and afterwards they came up to me and they asked me who had taught me how to dance like that, integrating the rumba moves and the clave and all that. And I said, ‘For this I didn’t have a teacher, I put this together myself.’ And they said, ‘Can you teach us? Because we would like to dance like you.’’ That to me is the biggest recognition I could ever hope for.”
This Thursday, April 24 The Max Pollak group celebrates the 25th anniversary of that meeting—with a performance at 92NY featuring Barbaro Ramos and other members of Los Muñequitos, the very dancers who first inspired and affirmed his vision, as well as Bobby Sanabria.
From Vienna to Havana, Harlem to Matanzas, Max Pollak’s path has been guided by rhythm, respect, and a deep spiritual pull. And it all began with a black-and-white glimpse of Fred Astaire—moving with elegance, swinging with ease.
