MILE ZERO DANCE SEASON #40: XL
 2025-26

Originally from rural Saskatchewan, Gerry Morita (BA Dance/ MFA Theatre. She has lived and worked in Vancouver, Montréal, and Tokyo as a dancer, choreographer, performance artist and teacher before moving to Edmonton and becoming Mile Zero Dance’s Artistic Director in 2006. Her work has toured Poland, Turkey, Estonia, Canada, and Japan.  

Morita’s body of work involves continuous inquiry into new ways of seeing movement, the body, and the spaces between us. She studies and teaches contact improvisation, Noguchi Taiso and other somatic-based and improvising techniques, working with artists from all disciplines in a vast array of both conventional and site-specific venues. She has received the Mayor’s Award for Innovation in Artistic Direction, the Edmonton Salute for Excellence, Edmonton Artists’ Trust Fund and was one of Alberta’s 25 Influential Artists recognized in 2016.

Louise Mallory has been creating and facilitating theatre and performance art in Edmonton for over a decade. She is a director, a production manager, and a stage manager. Louise has been a board member of Walterdale Theatre and is currently Treasurer of MUNT Performance Association. She maintains the theatre blog ephemeralpleasures.com and is an emerging playwright (Book Club 2021 at Walterdale Theatre’s From Cradle to Stage festival, Girls Don’t Play Hockey at Fierce Women of Alberta, Camrose). She is also a knitter, quilter, and occasional painter in acrylics.  Louise grew up in Stoney Creek, Ontario, and has lived in the Ritchie neighbourhood of Edmonton since 2008. 

As a professional engineer with a PhD in Welding Engineering, Louise loves spreadsheets, schedules, and conversations, and is excited to use her organizational skills for Mile Zero Dance.
Photo credit | Mat Simpson

Trent is an Edmonton based artist and arts enabler with a specialty in activating non-traditional performance spaces. A graduate of Grant MacEwan’s Theatre Production program and The Banff Centre for the Arts, Trent has spent the last 10 years as a Lighting Designer, Production Manager, Technical Director, Entertainment Programmer, Site Manager, and Theatre Technician.

Lexi Pendzich is a lens-based artist whose work focuses on documentary photography and portraiture.Lexi Pendzich is a photographer, whose lens-based work focuses on documentary photography, portraiture and subtle still life moments.

Lexi is a communications strategist with experience working at the intersection of marketing, social media, media relations, and web for arts and culture.

Katrina Smy has been living and dancing in amiskwacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6 Territory, all of her life. Her early training grounds include the Edmonton School of Ballet, Alberta Ballet School, and Grant MacEwan Community College, where she graduated from the Dance Program in 1992. She has performed extensively with KO Dance Projects, with Mistress Nancy Sandercock, and with Mile Zero Dance, where she held the position of General Manager from 2008-2014. Across her artistic career, she’s been drawn toward improv-based performance, site-specific, and installation work, and is able to specialize in eccentric or unusual roles. Katrina holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Eastern Philosophy and Drama.

Erin Pettifor is an interdisciplinary queer theatre artist based in Treaty 6 / Edmonton. In the 2023 Edmonton Fringe she premiered her solo Sterling Award winning show Stigma, Pistil and Style, directed by Jacqueline Russell, the Head Hag of Wee Witches. She and Russell are currently working on her next solo show Earl Grey. In 2023, Erin performed in Larrikin Entertainment’s, WYRD, a new musical that toured through the Yukon and Victoria. She has had the pleasure of being an artist in residence with Evergreen Theatre, working with children and youth on the creation of theatre. In the spring of 2025, Erin performed in FEED, a new contemporary dance work led by Tia Kushniruk as part of the Mile Zero Dance 2025 lab and in Little Women as Beth in the 2025 production at The Citadel Theatre directed by Jenna Rodgers. In the winters of 2025/2026, she took part in the Folk Trail as a rover in the Silverskate Festival. She has performed in the Connections and Collisions cabaret at Mile Zero Dance, various Nextfest cabarets, Play the Fool Festival, Blue Halloo Comedy, and in various Edmonton Fringe Productions over the past several years. She is enthused to be part of the MZD team as the Education Coordinator.