I used to call this way (role-less) at the gender-free contra that used to be held once a month in the Twin Cities. I was of the opinion that simply replacing the terms "gents" and "ladies" with other terms did not make a dance "gender-free," it just meant that we were using code words that everyone simply translated in their heads as "gent's role" and "lady's role." Most of the other callers who did this dance used "leads" and "follows."

Most attendees were experienced already; the inability of that series to draw people that weren't already coming to the regular contra was one of the reasons it did not last. So I have no idea if the way I taught would have been successful in a setting with many beginners. However, in the teaching at the beginning, I focused on the importance of ending certain moves (swings, courtesy turns, california twirls, etc.) consistently on the left or on the right, depending on where one started the dance -- with the warning that if one did not consistently end figures on the same side each time, one would lose one's partner. As much as possible during walkthroughs, I would described the ending orientation in relation to the starting orientation (end the swing having traded places, etc.)

I could not come up with any way that I found satisfactory to call ladies' chains without simply replacing "lady" with some code word that meant the same thing, so I did not program any dances that contained that figure, and as much as possible I avoided dances with figures where I could not easily describe who did what purely positionally (e.g. allemande right neighbor once and a half, then those facing in allemande left once and a half, etc.). These were pretty significant constraints -- probably cutting out 75-80% of my regular repertoire -- but fortunately the world of contra dance choreography is a rich one. With careful planning, I was able to program entire evenings with dances like Donna Calhoun's The Awesome Double Progression Dance, Steve Schnur's The 24th of June, Gene Hubert's Centrifugal Hey, and even Chorus Jig and Petronella. As I recall, I did not try squares, though some traditional figures like Uptown, Downtown and Grapevine Twist would lend themselves to this approach (also Grand Square, come to think of it).

FWIW, larks and ravens have not made it to the Twin Cities, though dancers that travel far afield for special events are beginning to bring back news of it from other parts of the country (and of course social media brings news in many other ways). One caller experimented with using the terms for one evening this past spring. The feedback they got was mostly negative.