Hello Matthew, nice to see that you are still posting.

The terms uke and nage describe a situation in the past tense. One person has thrown the other, the other has been thrown.

That works fine when we are doing kata, we know in advance which person is going to perform which role.

But if we study and practice genuine Aiki, then we do not really want to know in advance which role we are supposed to take.

So I prefer not to use the terms uke and nage. I rather use Aite and Shite instead.

The latter terms were used by actor / playwright Zeami to express two equal members of a play.

O Sensei had a distinct preference for these two terms for the same reasons as Zeami.