Challenge Entertainment was created by 19 year old Tatianna Sims in memory of her late grandfather Howard "Sandman" Sims.

 

Howard "Sandman" Sims, best known as his recurring role as executioner of the world famous Apollo Theater, was a dance icon, actor, and hoofer. For decades he was ''executioner''chasing unpopular acts off the stage on amateur nights, sometimes with a toy gun. He told disconsolate losers about how he himself had to return 10 times before being allowed to finish his act. But then he danced up storm upon storm and won 25 straight contests, a record that led to the four-win limit now in effect.

 

The man born Howard Sims became famous and won his stage name for dancing on sprinkled sand on a board of his own construction,  His skill was suggested by his accomplished students Gregory Hines and Ben Vereen, as well as by the boxers to whom Sandman taught footwork, including Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali.

 

In a review in The New York Times, the dance critic Anna Kisselgoff called him a ''virtuoso among virtuosos -- in a class by himself.''

 

When he won a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984, he used the $5,000 fellowship to teach dancing to children in a Harlem parking lot.