I think we are still ironing out who we are and where we are from but my best guess is that we will be a "travelling Egyptian family" More Mid East less Roma. The Ghawazee dancers start popping up in history books in the early 1700's simply because that is when the Europeans wrote about them. The Ghawazees are Roma in that they originated out of India with the travellers but for whatever reason stopped their travels and set up "shop" in Egypt. Once "discovered" by the Europeans they were somewhat of an oddity and were comissioned to entertain both the English and french troops during the Napoleanic wars. So, here is the stretch......Ghawazee dancers entertaining in Scotland. We do know that King James V employed a troupe of "Egyptians" to dance at Holyrood Palace for 40 shillings in 1529. The questions is where these Egyptians or Gypsies? I personally love the Rom culture but our style of dance is flokloric Middle eastern not Folkloric Roma. The timeline for this festival is 1300-1799. I see the commonsense in portraying a people more common to Scotland in the Rennaissance and beyond but I also love the diea of a troupe of travelling Egyptian entertainers too...
Thoughts anyone.....

I will have to learn how to say arse in Arabic!