Hot international contemporary dance names like Cayetano Soto and Kevin O'Day headline Ballet B.C.'s just-announced season, with the return of recent favourites like Jorma Elo and Medhi Walerski to create new pieces for the company.

Artistic director Emily Molnar continues to blaze a coolly contemporary path for the company, opening the 2013-2014 season in October with an edgy program called Tilt. It features two world premieres: one by Boston Ballet resident choreographer  Elo, whose 1st Flash wowed audiences here in 2011 and again this past winter, and another by Molnar herself, alongside a return presentation of Johan Inger's surreal Walking Mad, which earned raves in 2012.

In Grace Symmetry (febraury 20 to 22, 2014, at the Queen E.), Molnar taps the Turning Point Ensemble for live music to a new piece by rising Euro choreographer and Nederlands Dans Theatre talent Medhi Walerski (whose dream-logic Petite Ceremonie has been a recent audience favourite), as well as a new work by Ballet Mannheim Artistic Director Kevin O’Day. The program also features a reprisal of In Motion by Vancouver's Wen Wei Wang (known for works such as his erotically charged Unbound).

And April sees three world premieres in a show called UN/A, April 24 to 26, 2014: one is by Spanish star Soto, whose relentlessly hard-driving Fuel was a highlight of BJM (Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal)'s recent show here with DanceHouse: another is by Gustavo Ramirez Sansano, artistic director of the Chicago-based Luna Negra Dance Theatre; and a third is by Montreal choreographer and one-time Les Grands Ballets Canadiens star Gioconda Barbuto.

In addition, the troupe is presenting Alberta Ballet’s tribute to the music of Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (November 14 to 16) and the return of its production of The Nutcracker (December 28 to 31).

This July, the company also scores a major coup with performances at the prestigious dance festival at Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts. It will also appear at the Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur in Quebec and in Victoria in January 2014