Mak Yong, the Malaysian dance theatre proclaimed in 2006 as a 'Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Mankind' by UNESCO, is a play of gender disguises. Women play the main character roles of king and prince, queen and palace maids, while men play comedic and villain roles. They dance, sing, act, and mime as the dance theatre innovates, improvises and reciprocates scenes of a chosen story. The lead character role is performed by a female. Her entry into the performance space in full male costume and royal regalia accompanied by an entourage of female characters legitimized through her presiding role as an indispensable dancer in a sacred dance of salutation to the bowed spike fiddle ensemble. This paper discusses the effect of reiterated acting and dancing, through a performative narrative that is sustained by a tacit agreement to sustain discrete gender roles that obscure a person's normal gender.