The Body Becoming: Transformative Performance in Malaysian Mak Yong

Abstract

Mak yong is a Malay dance drama found in southern Thailand, northern Malaysia, and the Riau Islands of Indonesia. The form of mak yong currently performed in the northern Malaysian state of Kelantan requires its practitioners to be storytellers, actors, singers, dancers, musicians, and in the context of ritual performances, healers. Drawing upon interviews with performers, this article will explore first-hand accounts of the embodied experiences of individual Kelantanese mak yong practitioners during their performances of the Menghadap Rebab, the opening song and dance of a mak yong performance. This article will examine how prayer is understood by many Kelantanese mak yong performers to be an important aspect of their internal performances and will investigate how individual mak yong performers engage traditional Kelantanese understandings of the body during their performances.