MARLEE Matlin, the deaf, Oscar- winning actress who will tango and two-step on “Dancing with the Stars” next month, may have a leg up on her competition – the ability to “feel” the music in ways other people can’t.
Using her whole body, minimal hearing and relying heavily on her new dance partner, Fabian Sanchez, Matlin may turn out to be the favorite in a field of dancers that includes professional athletes, including figure-skating champ Kristi Yamaguchi.
“In a dance studio, I like the music to be turned up loud so I can follow along the bass line,” Matlin told The Post in an e-mail. But mostly, it’s about that rhythm I have inside me. I’ve got groove because my heart beats just like everyone else’s. The trick for me is to use what I’ve got to synch up with the music that comes through my dance partner’s moves.
“In the end, it sounds complicated, but it’s really not a big deal. Just ask the 30 million other deaf and hard of hearing Americans, and they’ll say the same thing. There’s music out there but a lot of it is about the music you have inside.”
Matlin says that she wears two digital hearing aids and without them she can hear essentially nothing. “They do a few things; they amplify the higher frequencies which I can’t hear, they sharpen the lower frequencies which I hear better and then they mix it all together and amplify it.
“As for music, I’ve been a fan of music for years – Billy Joel, Madonna, etc. With hearing aids, I’ve been able to hear the beat, I can hear that there’s music,” she says.
“And if I’ve learned the words, I can match up what I hear with the words being sung. That’s how I’ve been a big fan of Billy Joel’s music since I was a kid and that’s how I was able to sign the national anthem with him at last year’s Super Bowl.”
Rather than developing a special skill-set to work with Matlin, Sanchez – a Mambo champion and four time Fred Astaire national champion – will discover he is working with a perfectionist, and will need to have patience with her.
“I’m a workaholic and insist on a lot of rehearsal,” Matlin says. “Some have told me that it’s not good to practice too much because you can get burnt out. And I can understand that. But I like to get things spot on right and if that means a lot of work, well great. I’m prepared to work hard, and I just hope he’s ready for that.
“In the end, I just want to make him, my family and friends and the audience proud.” Matlin says she’s been a fan of the show and her family had been urging her to audition – until the show’s producers recently asked her to compete.
“My husband and kids kept telling me to ask to try out for the show,” she says. “But as I told them, it’s better to be asked to dance than to have to do the asking.”