Put on your dancing shoes.

No experience necessary.

Historic Rock Ford will host a Social Dance event Sunday, July 26, from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Langmuir Education Room located on the first floor of the Rock Ford Barn, 881 Rockford Road, Lancaster.

Register by going to http://www.historicrockford.org/special-events/social-dance-1-8583h. Walk-ins will be welcome.

Attendees are advised to wear clothes people can dance and move around in and flat-soled shoes that won't stick or skid on the concrete floor, Historic Rock Ford executive director Christina McSherry said. People are not required to bring a dance partner.

Visitors should bring water. The activity is recommended for peoples age 7 and up. There will be a nominal fee for nonmembers age 12 and up.

The Rock Ford dancers will perform on the porch of the Hand Mansion at 1 p.m.

"We started social dances last year because there was so much interest in our historic dance group," said McSherry. "People were always asking, 'Is there a place I can learn this? I'd love to try it.' The historic dance group requires a pretty extensive commitment to practicing and getting a costume, so we were starting to think (that this) is a good way to have people try out English country dance, which is the type of dancing that the Hand family would have done."

McSherry added, "English country dance is a centuries-old form of dance. It is still really popular worldwide. There's modern English country dance, groups that do new dances and things, but traditionally, it's the type of dancing you see, for example, in a Jane Austen movie where men are lined up on one side, ladies on the other. We don't care about that at our social dance just as long as there's two lines, but traditionally, that's how it would be done. And then you're dancing with the other couples, moving up or down the line."

Historic Rock Ford held its first social dance last year and has two more scheduled in 2026. "(The social dances are) a potential way to recruit people for the historic dance group if people really enjoy it," said McSherry. "We came up with the idea of social dance, which is a type of program that many different organizations do. They do it for different types of dances. There's a very strong English country dance, social dance community around the country. We tapped into that network to try to start our own program, and it was very successful last year. ... It's been a really fun time," said McSherry. "It's been a great success. We get people of all ages, from young kids."

All of the dances are taught. "You don't have to have any experience," McSherry said. "People explain how it works, and you get to walk through it a few times before we try it with music. There's a nice mix also of experienced and not experienced, so, if you have questions, someone around you can also help."

The dances that will be performed originated from music in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. "Some of those dances are much older," said McSherry. "They just do new movements to them, new choreography to them. They get updated, but the tunes themselves are pretty old. It's a fun chance to come and try something new, something maybe you've been curious about, whether you've seen it in films or on different TV shows."