hspace=15 vspace=5 width=225 height=180> No one has ever worn all black to a contra dance. The traditional dance form has a long history in New England, even here in the city, but it's fair to say that it has never been hip. Contra dancing is straight-up American folk culture. Dances are advertised as alcohol- and smoke-free. The music, which involves fiddles, is reminiscent of the soundtrack to a movie barn-raising montage. Contra dancing's roots reach back to the local grange hall, with ladies lined up on one side and gents lined up on the other and Grandpa calling out which way to swing your gal, giving the young folk the opportunity for some good, clean, foot-stomping contact with the opposite sex.

Which makes it all the more curious that the man dancing across from me is wearing a leotard and a tropical-print skirt.

Don't get the wrong idea. In its late-20th-century incarnation, contra still serves up good, clean, foot-stomping fun. It's still far from hip. But in Boston, over the past several years, contra has acquired a distinctly subversive edge. Thanks to a burgeoning gay and lesbian contra-dancing scene, a new phenomenon has arisen: the "gender-free" dance, a euphemism that sounds like sexual Nutrasweet but simply means that traditional gender roles do not apply. Women can lead men around the floor. Men can lead men.

Not every contra dancer is happy about it, but from this traditional form is emerging the nugget of something downright radical.

Ask any contra dancer about the pastime, and odds are the first thing you'll hear is that "it's not square dancing." No frilly skirts, no bolo ties. Period.

To an outsider, the distinction may seem subtle. A caller at the front of the room announces moves such as do-si-dos and allemandes, and people grab hands and move rapidly in and out of two-, four-, and eight-person formations. They stomp their feet at the appropriate moments. From above, it looks like a human kaleidoscope.

In the late '80s, during a particularly fervent resurgence in contra dancing, a Connecticut-raised man named Chris Ricciotti decided to turn what were occasional gay contra dances into regular events. A demure person sometimes known as the "Queen Mum" of the gender-free contra scene in Boston, Ricciotti instituted a gay and lesbian dance in March 1987. At that point, he was still calling the steps using the words "ladies" and "gents." "I'd been dancing since I was six years old," he says. "I never knew another way to do it."

hspace=15 vspace=5 width=136 height=238> As the dancing caught on in the gay community, the terminology caused obvious logistical problems for same-sex couples. The words "ladies" and "gents" started to seem out of place. "People challenged me to change what I was doing," says Ricciotti. "I introduced an idea, told people this was going to be a session where gender wasn't identified." In 1990, gender-free dancing was born.

Ricciotti's solution was to use armbands: tie on an armband, and you've chosen to dance the traditional leader's role; take your armband off, and you're dancing as a follower. Instead of ladies and gents, people danced as "bare-arms" or "armbands," depending only on their mood.

At first, despite the term "gender-free," dancers split into single-sex groups, with people dancing only with their partners or potential partners. "It became a meat market," Ricciotti says. "My space was being invaded, not just as a gay man but as a human being. I hate to say it, but that's not how I was raised." Groping wasn't what Ricciotti had had in mind, so he worked hard to encourage people to switch back and forth from male partners to female partners, to dance in a way that was more purely gender-free. "I started incorporating mixers. I didn't want segregation between the genders just because the attendees were gay or lesbian. Eventually people got it, and now people really enjoy it. They dance with everybody, both genders, it doesn't matter who's dancing what position."

Liberated as it is, the JP contra-dance scene isn't the nation's most progressive. In St. Paul, Minnesota, some dancers in a more political contra group called Lez Be Gay 'N' Dance see even armbands as a concession to heterosexual tradition -- as "a proxy for gender." They make their events as close to genderless as possible, calling the dance based on which side of the room they're on, with no visual cues at all.

But Ricciotti "wouldn't want to dance specifically to be political," he says. For the Queen Mum, it's about encouraging "dancers to see the whole dance, not just their role or their partner's role. The fun starts when you start swapping roles. It becomes just everybody dancing together."

At the first gender-free contra dance I attend, Cen (pronounced Ken) del Po asks me to dance. With close-cropped hair, glasses, and a goatee, del Po looks like a lot of guys I know, except that he's wearing an orange band across his chest, like a crossing guard. The caller asks for a "gypsy," and del Po teaches me what is basically a fancy way of walking around your partner, right shoulder to right shoulder, "while gazing deeply into each other's eyes," he says.

Del Po leads the gypsy, but later I take the hand of a man wearing a peacock-green T-shirt for a "promenade." I am leading this dance; the peacock-clad man can tell because I have a bright orange ribbon tied to my tank top. We don't gaze as deeply, but I do look my partner right in the eye. (Practically speaking, it's important to maintain eye contact in order to help you keep your balance -- "spotting," in dance lingo.) The eye contact gives contra dancing a serial intimacy that can be unnerving -- even forward-seeming -- for a new dancer.

hspace=15 vspace=5 width=145 height=238> But the gender-free dynamic does a lot to neuter the weirdness of trading stares with a series of total strangers. Cen del Po, for instance, has a campy, contagious enthusiasm that remains unchanged whether he's leading another man or following a woman. It's a kind of equal-opportunity flirtation, and as a result it's remarkably nonsexual. Outright hitting on someone would somehow seem transgressive in this airy ballroom.

"People do meet partners" at the gender-free dances, del Po says, over a brownie and some grapes. "But that's not why I'm here."

That is, however, why a lot of people show up at a traditional (or "gender-role," or "straight") contra dance.

Though gender-free contra dances are gaining in popularity, averaging between 40 and 70 people at each event, they're still dwarfed by the straight contra scene. Locally, you can dance almost every night if you want to; the hottest event in the contra mainstream is the weekly dance at the Cambridge VFW hall, which regularly draws a couple hundred people.

The VFW is stuck in the 1970s, complete with orange- naugahyde-covered chairs and tangerine swags over every window. The crowd looks like one you'd see at a folk-music concert: the men favor beards and mustaches; women wear long skirts with belts. The age range is wide, from some recent Oberlin grads who just started dancing to a white-haired couple who've been dancing for decades. And the skill level at this Thursday-night dance is consistently high: lots of rapid twirling, few dancers who mess up and get out of line.

All this alcohol-free fiddling, sweating, and whirling might not look like a setting for seduction. And in many ways, it's not. But contra dancing can surprise you.

Laura Indigo, a 29-year-old shiatsu massage therapist with pale hair and pale eyes, is a lifelong dancer. She's lived in Boston for four years, but she's been a regular at the VFW dance for just two and a half. That's because her first visit to the VFW turned her off so completely that it took her a year and a half to decide to come back. Indigo was hit on, and aggressively so.

"It was . . . very uncomfortable," she says. "Once you know the people, it's different, but at first . . . you know, you're looking right in their eyes . . . "

She's one among many dancers -- men and women, gay and straight -- who say that the traditional gender-role dances can be a "real meat market."

It's hard to imagine any of the earnest high-tech hippies and casual-dress potters and folk fans I saw at the VFW dropping a sleazy "Come here often?" But it's true that there's an old-fashioned, almost proprietary assertiveness to the men at the VFW. And the mainstream dance does have a traditional, well-delineated gender dynamic that makes the gender-free dancers stand out when they crash the party. They tell stories about straight dancers who tried to forcefully rearrange couples who were "on the wrong side," or seasoned straight dancers who were startled out of position when a man came dancing down the line instead of a woman.

hspace=15 vspace=5 width=154 height=238> If the Cambridge scene maintains a certain old-fashioned ladies-and-gents spirit, it may be thanks in part to Larry Jennings. Identified by some as the "dean" of Boston contra dancing, Jennings is a white-haired 69-year-old retired physicist whose passion is marshaling and organizing the local contra scene. He is the author of a book called Zesty Contra, which is soon to be followed by a sequel.

To Jennings, contra just isn't as zesty without the gender roles. "It's not very nice to be called a band or a bare-arm," he says. And he seems to find the whole prospect of gender-free dancing slightly . . . messy. "I fault them for not getting their act together," he says. "But they have so much enthusiasm that they do very well without getting their act together."

He does encourage people to learn both parts and to dance with others of the same sex, but only when there's an excess of one sex or the other. That way, everyone dances. But when it's not born of necessity, he feels crossing gender lines causes problems. "My own personal position," he says candidly, "is if there are a lot of pairs of women and pairs of men dancing, it gives a certain aura to the dance. And whether we like it or not, that's not something that's shared by the majority of people. That's an . . . aura, a preference, that some people don't share.

"I think the present situation is very good. Each group respects the other. I'm very happy personally that a movement that I've been active with has this feature of breadth without animosity.

"There's gonna be straight people and gay people. And since some of the aspect of dancing is, let's say, to dance with the opposite sex . . . I mean, straight people like that."

Other straight dancers I spoke to say they "just get confused" by the gender-free thing. But they all say they are glad it exists. And it seems they're getting more used to it. At the annual New England Folk Festival, a couple of gender-free dances are now par for the course, and are well-attended by straight folk.

Even under Jennings's watch, if you look closely, black and white has already dissolved into shades of gray. At least two or three people in the crowd at the traditional contra night walk the gender-identity line. Reno, a big man in a purple shirt, is straight. But he's wearing a long, gauzy, printed skirt because "it's more comfortable," and he's not the only guy who sometimes shows up in women's clothing. Cortni, who has a certain masculinity lurking about her jawbone and whose unshaven legs look twice as strong as the next guy's, says she's "pretty much" straight, but acknowledges that "I've been known to confuse some people." One pale man with pinched lips and short blue shorts looks distinctly like he's wearing makeup.

At one point, the caller, Rick Mohr, starts a new, unusual dance that places same-sex couples together. First, the two women in a square of two couples swing each other in the center. "This is your chance to show some vocal appreciation for the ladies -- okay, gents?" he teases.

The pairs of women smile at each other politely, and laugh at not knowing exactly where to put their arms. In general, the twirls seem to be lacking in oomph. The guys make polite appreciative noises.

hspace=15 vspace=5 width=153 height=238> Then, halfway through the dance, Mohr switches the direction of the "hey" -- a little maneuver where four dancers weave past each other in tight figure eights. This lands the men in the middle, in pairs. Now, it's "Swing your partner, guys!"

Eight counts later, 50 men are faced with 50 other men, lined up along the hall. They grab each other, firmly, with a few awkward bumps. The vast majority don't look each other in the eye. They swing each other with a vengeance, pivoting like dervishes, as if they're trying to out-spin each other for the lead.

For all that the gender-free dancers say "straight men are uncomfortable touching other men," these guys don't actually seem uncomfortable so much as a little too intense. The "ladies" pick up on the tension and energy, far outdoing the guys on the whooping and yelling. The guys swing even faster. When the dance resumes, the entire hall seems breathless. A number of dancers later tell me that this was their favorite dance of the evening.

"There's this whole concept in dance about giving good weight," says Liz Augustine, a long-time member of the gender-free community. "If one person is too limp or one person is pulling too hard, it just doesn't work. But if both people are giving good weight, giving and taking the same, it's what they call a magic moment."

Gender-free dancers often complain that straight men pull too hard, force too many twirls, or dig their fingers into your kidneys. Straight women, they say, don't hold their own weight, are basically too limp. But switch sides, and suddenly you have a perspective on the dance's logic, as a whole, that you were blind to before. And how often, really, do we get to find out how the other half feels?

True, gender-free dancing is kind of odd. But so are traditional gender dynamics, when you step outside them. Armbands and bare-arms give genuine insight into the reality that these roles are our own creation -- and that translates, at least in this one group of dancers, into a sense of community that trumps gender orientation at every turn. The ostensibly weird people, it turns out, are actually much more communal -- more purely focused on raising the barn, so to speak -- than anyone else.

For example, Augustine's partner is a man. But Augustine does not call herself straight, since she was a long-time member of a lesbian community. She kept her heterosexual relationship secret for years, after watching other lesbians get "kicked out of the club" for dating men. When she finally came clean in the gender-free community, they understood why she'd been so guarded. But they also basically told her she was silly for thinking that she wouldn't always be welcome.

For Augustine and her partner, gender-free dancing provided a human tolerance that went beyond gay or straight. "They're more focused on our happiness than on worrying about what a standard relationship should be," she says. "I draw a lot of analogies about my own life from dance."