Portage's Prairie Cloggers are dancing up a storm today in Oakville as they meet with other clogging groups from Brandon and Winnipeg for their fall workshop.

Heather Kerr is an instructor with the Prairie Cloggers. She explains workshops like these are an opportunity for different groups to learn from each other.

"The different instructors will teach dances to all the cloggers and we just learn from each other. It's good because everybody there wants to clog and everybody is there to have fun," says Kerr, adding the workshops are also useful for the instructors as it allows them to improve their teaching techniques.

Kerr adds through these workshops they are also very fortunate to be able to work with Darolyn Pchajek, a national instructor based in Winnipeg.

"She goes to many, many conventions in the United States, and she's been to Australia to teach, so we're really lucky," says Kerr. "We learn a lot from Darolyn. She has more of the advanced dances that we want to encourage anybody who would like to learn them to be able to do so, and Darolyn provides us with a lot of information and help."

Kerr says one of the other goals of the fall workshops is to raise funds in order to be able to hire guest instructors from the States to come out to teach during their annual spring workshop in Winnipeg.

This is the first time in a few years that the fall workshop has been held in the Portage area and Kerr notes it's really nice to hold it so close to home.

"It takes off another 45 minutes for the Brandon people and, for us Prairie Cloggers, we're only 10 minutes away so we're very fortunate for that," says Kerr, adding the fall workshop has previously been held in Brandon but this has an effect on the attendance from the Winnipeg groups.