Backstage Report: Competition's too 'Difficult' for Marlee Matlin

• Apr 23, 2008 03:13 PM ET
• by danceteam

After Monday night's Dancing with the Stars performance show, head judge Len Goodman headed home and turned on his television. Thanks to the west coast tape delay, when Goodman got home, that night's show was still in progress, "and Marlee [Matlin] came on," he says. "So I pressed the mute button, and I'm watching her, and thinking, ''That's what she's hearing. Nothing.'"

That was the night before Matlin was sent home, and it was Goodman's way of trying to understand the almost impossible odds facing Dancing's first deaf contestant. All three judges have been trying to put themselves in Matlin's shoes. "I think it's very lonely out there for her, whenever she makes a misstep," says judge Carrie Ann Inaba. "I really get the sense that every time she makes a mistake, it's like a vacuum, like suddenly she's just alone. Even her partner is connected to the outside world. And she doesn't get to hear the applause, so she doesn't get that added momentum."

"She does incredibly well," says judge Bruno Tonioli. "But obviously, there is a point where we have to do our job. It wouldn't be fair to the others to give her a pass."

"My feeling," says Goodman, "is that Marlee's strengths were in the dances where her acting strengths could come out. And unfortunately, the last two weeks, she's had the samba, which is a very fast, rhythmic dance, with lots of steps and movement, and the mambo, a very similar dance. Hard, fast, very rhythmic, with no time to use her main skill, which is embracing the dance."

Two weeks ago, Matlin's partner, Fabian Sanchez, knew that even before they stepped on the dance floor to perform the samba, something was off. "Before we went out, I said, 'Do you still want to be here?' And she assured me that she did. But I felt that she was a little different."

Still, Sanchez had all the faith in the world that Matlin would be able to pull off the mambo, another tough Latin dance on Monday night. "To me," he says, "the true dancer is the one who makes a mistake and gets back in the music and doesn't allow anyone to know that they made a mistake. And she did that. She couldn't find the rhythm, so she had to count on muscle memory, and finding me. And she did."

But you could see all three judges struggle with having to assess her. And they were really worried that if she made it through to next week - when the couples will be required to perform two full dances - that the learning process would simply be too hard. "I respect her so much," says Inaba. "But dance is about the connection to music, some dances more than others. When you don't have that connection, it's never going to go past a certain point. She can move technically perfectly, but now, with the schedule the way it is, she can't keep up. There's just not enough time to perfect these dances the way she wants to."

"It's too difficult for her now," says Goodman. "But for a deaf person to come on Dancing with the Stars and perform at a high level - maybe not the highest level - is good for dance and good for the show. She proves that the only limitations are the ones you put on yourself." - Deborah Starr Seibel

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