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At her part-time job at a busy takeout place in Halifax, Emma Fineblit hears plenty of talk about the latest thing to do in the city. When that talk recently turned to something called contra dance, the 20-year-old Saint Mary's University student, who moved from Winnipeg in September, was curious.

"I guess I expected it to be like in the movies - a barn with people wearing plaid," she recalls of her initial expectations. "I was pretty nervous about going alone so I dragged a friend along with me."

Instead, Ms. Fineblit and her friend found a roomful of "goofy North Enders" - from the city's artist and student community - trying to execute dances with names such as Haste to the Wedding and the Scout-House Reel.

Across the country, the traditional art of contra dancing is enjoying a shot of youthful energy from a new generation attracted to its throwback lack of pretension and sense of community. Where the similarly retro-tinted swing dance revival in the 1990s infused late nights with martinis and a smoky elegance, a contra dance party is typically a non-alcoholic affair held on early Sunday evenings in rented church halls and social clubs.

Contra pivots on a simpler skill set than swing, and involves contact with more people than even the closely related square dance. Dancers in pairs form two parallel lines and move through a sequence of dances. The progression simultaneously moves down one queue and up the other so that each couple eventually pairs up with every other couple. A caller guides the room through the patterns from the stage, where a band, often sitting, plays songs that can stretch longer than 10 minutes.

"We say [contra]'s square dancing without the square," explains Amy Lounder, fiddler for the Smokin' Contra Band, a group she co-founded a little over a year ago that's been pulling in newbies such as Ms. Fineblit. Ms. Lounder, 28, first discovered contra six years ago while apprenticing as an organic farmer in upstate New York. For the next two years, she was tutored by the late contra caller Bettle Massett in Durham, Ont.

The term "contra," she says, is the anglicized version of the French contre (in opposition to). Contemporary contra draws on diverse sources: English country dance, court dance in France and colonial variations from Eastern Canada, Quebec and the northeastern United States. It has spread as far south as Kentucky and as far west as Vancouver.

Ivy Sarquhar-McDonnell, a 19-year-old student at McGill University in Montreal, grew up on the Toronto Islands, where the family attended square dances at a community hall. But it wasn't until earlier this year, when one of her friends wanted to celebrate his birthday in a memorable way, that she came upon contra.

She has since formed a group, the Montreal Friends of Contra, that has held two dances this year at McGill's Diocesan College.

More than 100 people showed up to the inaugural dance in mid-February. Immediately after, "people on our Facebook group were writing, 'we need to have one soon!' " Her Facebook group now has 114 members.

Still, the crowd at the first dance wasn't exactly what she expected. "We realized there was no one between the ages of 25 and 60," Ms. Sarquhar-McDonnell laughs. The band, Ojo, had promoted the event to its fans, a decidedly older bunch. "On one hand they were frustrated with our lack of experience, but so amazed that there were so many of us. They kept asking, 'How did you find out about contra?' "

Contra veterans welcome the cross-generational mix.

Sandy Cameron, 55, co-president of Toronto Country Dancers, an informal social dance club, says the neophytes bring not only numbers, but also a youthful verve. "We don't proceed any slower for the younger folk," he wrote in an e-mail. "They are really quick learners and have energy to spare."

And the nature of contra dance, Mr. Cameron says, forces everybody to mingle. "The younger folk tend to like to dance with each other, which we understand, but everyone interacts along the lines and between dances even if we don't partner with younger folk all the time."

For those younger folk, the appeals of contra are myriad.

There's the absence of snobbery. "Especially when you're first learning, everyone's messing up a lot. It's a pretty unself-conscious kind of dancing, so you realize no one else knows what they're doing," Ms. Sarquhar-McDonnell says.

There's the relaxed dress code. Kate McGee, a "second-generation" folk musician and contra dancer, likes to wear a billowy vintage skirt when she goes to events in Toronto: "You twirl and spin, the skirt flies out and that only adds to the satisfaction."

Meanwhile her friend, Stefan Read, an MBA student, goes for comfort: "I wear jeans, a T-shirt and some Converse Chucks [Chuck Taylors] because they're incredibly comfy and they have no tread so I can slide around a bit more."

Finally, there's the rush of excitement - a momentary encounter with a stranger. "You get to dance with all these people you don't even really know," Ms. Sarquhar-McDonnell says.

It's "flirtation and contact" without consequence, says

Ms. Lounder of the Smokin' Contra Band. "You have fun and you move on to the next partner."