One of the advantages of the old-style "active & (genuinely) inactive" contra dances is that the new dancers in old-style dances have the opportunity to observe everyone while inactive.
I think one of the challenging aspects for people new to dance, or new to contradance in the present era of post-1970s-all-are-symetrically-active-all-the-time dances is the lack of opportunity to observe other dancers, in anticipation of becoming active, while in the dance. The present stylistic regime of contradance typically requires the dancer to participate all the time, often without a break, which is quite a step up from not knowing anything about contra dance. ~Mark
