The Faith of Mak Yong

From the extract on page 111 in Now Read On taken from the play entitled In the Name of Love by Ramli Ibrahim, I have an insight that Mak Yong is in critical phase. The speaker expresses her feelings of anger and disappointment to the kind of reaction that Mak Yong has to face from the people. From what I have read, I notice that the speaker is an old woman because she keeps repeating the phrase, “in my old days”. She said that during her time, Mak Yong is alive but now its faith is uncertain whether dead or alive.
Honestly said, I myself also haven’t seen with my own eyes the performance of this traditional dance. I don’t have any idea how it is performed and also what their costumes is look likes. All I know is that it is performed by all women. From what I’ve read from the internet, Mak Yong is originally from Kelantan and it have the feature of elements of ritual, stylized dance and acting, vocal instrument music, story, song, formal as well as improvised monologue and dialogue.
The speaker also told Li that she and her friends have to move to Terengganu because of the new law in Kelantan. It’s true because Kelantan banned this ancient dance in 1991 after the Islamic Party of Malaysia (PAS) took control of the state for having ‘unIslamic’ influence because it is believed that Mak Yong portrayed some elements that against Islam. The year 1991 also the time this play was first performed. Talk about ‘unIslamic’, what does it means? I guess it is probably because this dance deals with spirit and also it is performed by all women often by all Muslims.
In my opinion, we should prevent this dance to become only a legend told by grandmothers to their grandchildrens (if they want to listen!) or from the teachers to the students. Just imagine that even I also did not know any facts about Mak Yong, how about other teenagers and those who are much younger than me? I do admit that I’m not a big fan of traditional dance but be frank, do we really want this to be happen? If Kelantan wanted to ban Mak Yong, just let them but let the other state to continue the tradition. If there is no action being taken, I’m sure and pretty sure that the next generation will only know about Mak Yong from history books, magazines and same as me where I found mine – from the Internet.