Blind, gutsy and gifted … Karin discovers life, love and independence through learning how to dance.

Promo for Can You Feel Me Dancing? [1986] starring Justine Bateman as Karin

 Karin feels the rays against her eyes & sways,
 two ticket stubs in her hand, invitations inside
 her carry-bag. Larry arrives presently, guiding 
 the cup towards her face. Coke’s strong motion 
  
 against ice. Her brother’s hair is spiky to touch, 
 of course, echo of freeway traffic in his shaking 
 left hand. Just like his personality. He uses chop-
 sticks to make beats when they order take-out. 
  
 Always watching that show – The Fall Guy – in
 between his practice, driving Karin to work &
 wishing he was blind. So would that help, if I was 
 blind, just like you Karin? She heard disbelief in 
  
 his Fall Guy voice when she said she wanted
 to go to The movies? What the? You? I, no way! 
 Reaching over to touch her arm & say sorry,
 expertly removing the Coke from her grasp. 
  
 The cinema’s cooling system hits Karin’s face
 like a museum of the dark. The preview starts 
 but Larry’s talking about his band The Cathode 
 Rays & how he’s been giving it some thought
  
 & has decided to leave home. Karin’s trying to
 make it out, some kind of children’s movie, all
 that Disney tinkling on the keys ... the cinema’s 
 roaring with subliminal advertising & though 
  
 it has no obvious effect on Karin, who is to
 say what might happen when an image passes
 through a person, as the blip-verts did. Their
 hot velocities, yesterday evening, downtown. 
  
 The premiere this afternoon is for another of 
 Justine Bateman’s teen films. Karin lined up for 
 tickets all day outside the radio station offices, 
 on that wind-blown interstice of the new city.
  
 Dancing makes you free. You’re in an invisible
 machine, standing upright, & each movement of
 your body bends space & time. For Karin, that
 moment before lift-off comes like a swoon, or
  
 a screen kiss at the end of a dance. She freezes
 in mid-air like Superman before a blue screen,
 or a magician’s assistant, supported by strings,
 listening for the end of each scene. A minimum 
  
 of crowd noise, just the tube’s silver surf. The 
 way it was that afternoon at home when she sat 
 & listened all the way through it. That silence 
 just before the evening news began, that high
  
 & lonely message, the dead air calling home. 
 That cessation, at some core aural level, of her 
 mother’s progress across the lounge’s lino floor, 
 stunned by a headline. The moment between 
  
 dancing & love-making, then, amounts only to
 a way of saying the same words, singing the 
 same tunes. She & Richie dance near the bar, 
 her feet on top of his white dancer’s shoes. 
  
 Now, the moment the movie begins, Larry’s 
 talking about his mobile phone & how when 
 he types in movies it mistakes it for mother & 
 Karin wonders if he even knows the movie’s 
  
 started & that this is how it feels to fall in love. 
 The moment after that moment between, 
 when people become lovers in lanes or catch 
 commuter buses. That musky hum, of things 
  
 we know of that are yet to happen. Advertorial 
 dreams, or the snicker of a game-show hostess 
 off-camera. Heaters the crew might have trained 
 on the site of their screen love’s consummation, 
  
 a warmth that she alone could not provide, not 
 in a sex scene, & certainly not with him. & so, in 
 the cinema toilet cubicle, Karin sits listening as 
 two girls discuss Justine Bateman’s after-party 
  
 outfit, her uniform for the obligatory autograph 
 sessions. Parting with her invitation at the door, 
 Karin’s hit by a whirl of silk scarves & hears the 
 voice of Karin & Larry’s introducing her as his 
  
 sister & saying how she’s blind & how she likes 
 that other movie she was in & Justine Bateman’s 
 going Hi Karin then Oh then Oh, I see & Karin’s 
 standing there shaking, going No. No you don’t. 
  
 Across the street the last supermarket's already 
 closed but Karin’s out in the middle of the road, 
 sensing both the kerb & the figure she guesses is 
 still Justine & she’s trying to say that even though 
  
 the end is coming soon, more than TV, more than 
 cinema even, how she wants the movies to come 
 to her in her radio-play dreams & then Justine’s 
 leaving, the taxi’s arrived & she hasn’t even said
  
 goodbye & when the soundtrack cuts out it’s cold
 & Karin recalls that she never did learn to dance, 
 despite his encouragement & now it’s snowing in 
 Los Angeles & she’s the only one here who knows.

First published by The Red Room as part of its Poetry Picture Show project.