Andrea Mohin/The New York Times  THREE of the world’s greatest dancers, each from a different continent, each from a different dance idiom, come to New York this fall. The Spanish flamenco artist Soledad Barrio returns, with her troupe Noche Flamenca, to the Joyce Theater for two weeks starting Sept. 18. Nov. 1 through 3 the Indian Bharata Natyam dancer Malavika Sarukkai performs at the Baryshnikov Arts Center. And the Argentine tango master Gabriel Missé returns to New York from Nov. 23 through December, teaching workshops and appearing in the city’s milongas, or social tango gatherings.  Just to think of any one of these dancers is to envisage high levels of drama, rhythm, musicality. But to compare the three is to see how diverse the range of dance can be. Tango is a contact dance for two and travels through space; flamenco, usually danced apart, often stays on a fixed spot. There’s a distant stylistic resemblance (in both music and movement) between flamenco and Bharata Natyam, and yet flamenco dancers wear shoes with heels that they drill loudly into the floor, whereas Bharata Natyam dancers, barefoot, wear ankle bells. Larger than this, the temperamental difference is vast: In flamenco, the dancer’s ego seems thrilling, while in Indian classical dance, the dancer often suggests transcendence — absorption in matters larger than the self. Tango, meanwhile, suggests symbiosis, either fateful or witty.  The critic David Vaughan once wrote that the ABC of contemporary classicism was Frederick Ashton, George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham. Though all three are now dead, to many of us today they remain unsurpassed. Every year brings plenty of Balanchine to New York, but this season brings high-concentrate fixes from New York City Ballet in dances set to compositions by the two composers whom he revisited most: Stravinsky, in 12 ballets beginning Sept. 18, and Tchaikovsky, in 10 works beginning Jan. 15.  American Ballet Theater’s spring 2013 season at the Metropolitan Opera House brings both a revival of Ashton’s three-act “Sylvia” and the company’s first production of his one-act narrative ballet “Month in the Country.” And Benjamin Millepied’s new L.A. Dance Project revives Cunningham’s “Winterbranch,” both for its opening performances in Los Angeles in September and its October visit to the East Coast at Peak Performances at Montclair State University in New Jersey.  The coming nine months also promise to be important for a number of our foremost living choreographers. Mark Morris has three premieres between September and November. First, at Bryn Mawr on Sept. 14, the Voloshky Ukrainian Dance Ensemble will perform dances to Saint-Saëns’s “Carnival of the Animals” with Voloshky’s live orchestra and American and Ukrainian dancers. This is the first nontraditional dance in the Voloshky’s repertory. Then an engagement in his native Seattle, with “Back on the Boards,” a world premiere that will feature the Mark Morris Dance Group in work set to recordings of short stories by Ivor Cutler, some but not all with music; the work will have two casts of eight performers. Also in Seattle, Pacific Northwest Ballet on Nov. 2 presents its first Morris commission, choreographed to Hindemith’s Kammermusik No. 3, featuring solo cello.  In Shakespeare’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” a soothsayer warns Antony that his destiny cannot prosper when he is near Caesar. I wish someone would tell the same to Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon. We’re lucky to have them both, but the device of presenting world premieres by both choreographers only in the same program encourages people to compare one to the disadvantage of the other — even though the same man does not emerge uppermost every time. On Feb. 22 the Royal Ballet will present world premieres by both choreographers.  It’s better when geographical space, large or small, separates the two artists. The Mariinsky Ballet brings Mr. Ratmansky’s 2002 three-act Prokofiev “Cinderella” to the Kennedy Center in Washington on Oct. 16, while Mr. Wheeldon’s treatment of the same story and score has its American premiere with San Francisco Ballet on May 3.  Next May, Wheeldon and Ratmansky premieres will occur on different sides of Lincoln Center Plaza. Mr. Wheeldon’s, for New York City Ballet at the Koch Theater, comes on May 9. Then Mr. Ratmansky presents a composite trio of works to separate compositions by Shostakovich for American Ballet Theater at the Metropolitan Opera House on May 31. The first of Mr. Ratmansky’s three pieces opens on Oct. 18 in the company’s City Center season; and it’s likely that the three, in due course, may be performed independently. Still, a trio of one composer’s symphonies! One can’t help hoping that this unusual format will take the art of ballet in new directions.
Along with George Balanchine and Merce Cunningham classics this season, dance audiences will see new choreographic works as well as international artists.