MOLINE, Ill. — A lot of people with normal hearing are terrified of dancing.So people with a hearing impairment must be even more terrified, right?

Not actress Marlee Matlin, who’s been deaf since she was a child. Matlin competed in the sixth season of “Dancing with the Stars” and now is part of “Dancing with the Stars — The Tour.” The tour comes to the area tonight at the I Wireless Center.

Matlin, 43, is joined on tour by fellow stars Lance Bass, Toni Braxton and Maurice Greene, along with dancers Mark Ballas, Derek Hough, Kym Johnson, Lacey Schwimmer, Fabian Sanchez, Karina Smirnoff, Edyta Sliwinska and Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

While “Dancing with the Stars” greatly increased Matlin’s profile, she’s had a long and successful career as an actress. Matlin won an Academy Award for Best Actress for 1986’s “Children of a Lesser God,” and she’s had memorable roles on many TV shows, including “Seinfeld,” “The Practice” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” Matlin’s autobiography, “I’ll Scream Later,” comes out in April.

In an e-mail interview from her home outside Los Angeles (she grew up in the Chicago suburbs), Matlin says you don’t need to hear to dance, you just need music flowing through your veins.

Gazette: How do you like the tour so far? How does it feel to know an arena full of people are cheering for you?

Marlee Matlin: I love it. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself doing something like this. I get to work with a great bunch of people and we’re traveling across the country in buses seeing America. It’s a great change from doing movies and television work. As for the entire arena cheering for me, it’s a rock star fantasy come true. Read the rest of this entry »