Maybe you could take a look at LXDE? There are still dependencies to GTK2 as XFCE, but those are not Gnome deps...
I'll switch to another DE, as soon as I've got more time for the computer. At the moment I've got unpleasant things to do and when using my computer, I'll make music, something that is an issue, but I ignore all the issues, resp. I also have to do unpleasant office work. And no, I can't give examples for pleasant office work.
I already was uncertain, if I should use Xfce or LXDE, when I switched to Xfce.