Living legends, monstre sacrés, great institutions, and kinky foreign visitors: All will enjoy the spotlight during New York City’s fall dance season. The major event is American Ballet Theatre’s annual run at City Center, this year between October 18 and November 5. ABT’s fall season shows almost an entirely different company, at least artistically, than its spring programs at the Metropolitan Opera House — instead of eveninglength blockbusters, we are treated to a liberal assortment of one-act works.

This year the company revives Twyla Tharp’s “Sinatra Suite,” created as a vehicle for Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1983, and not seen at ABT since Mr. Baryshnikov danced it in New York in 1984. Circular patterns of history reassert themselves as Elaine Kudo, Mr. Baryshnikov’s partner during the piece’s original run at ABT, will stage this year’s resurrection. Mr. Baryshnikov’s role will be danced by Herman Cornejo, and it remains to be seen how well the work stands up without its original star.

There will also be new work by Jorma Elo, Boston Ballet’s resident choreographer, who is very popular at the moment. Last spring, Mr. Elo made a ballet for New York City Ballet’s Diamond Project.

But the most exciting event of the ABT season, at least for balletomanes, is probably a revival of “Symphonie Concertante,” a much-too-infrequently-performed masterpiece by George Balanchine.Created for “Ballet Society,”a forerunner of NYCB, in 1947, the piece was reconstructed by ABT in 1983 from notation after being absent from the stage for 30 years. Last performed by ABT in 1999, “Symphonie Concertante,” is set to Mozart at his most sublime, aptly matched by choreography that includes some of the most inventive and expressive passages Balanchine ever created.

Keeping with superlatives, French ballerina Sylvie Guillem’s outsize extensions and outsize audacity have made her one of the ballet world’s most controversial divas for more than 20 years. Ms. Guillem has mellowed as well as improved with age, but she is always ready for a new challenge. October 11–15, she will star in British contemporary choreographer Russell Maliphant’s evening-length mixed bill, “Push,” at City Center.

City Center will also play host to its third annual “Fall for Dance” celebration, September 28–October 8. The program is different at every performance, but “Fall for Dance” offers an extraordinary mix of international companies, ranging from the Dutch National Ballet to the BalletBoyz, NYCB to the Martha Graham Dance Company at bargain basement prices ($10 per ticket). If you’re an adventurous dance lover, this is certainly for you. But, even if you relish the familiar, you might depend on “Fall for Dance” to deliver some standbys: The festival’s October 3 program offers New Yorkers one of the only chances to see NYCB in a performance other than the “Nutcracker” (which opens November 24) this fall season.

Dance will hit a deeper register this fall, as two all-male companies make their marks. First, Valery Mikhailovsky’s St. Petersburg State Male Ballet will visit Brooklyn College’s Whitman Theater November 4. Mr. Mikhailovsky is a dance celebrity in Russia. He was one of the stars of Boris Eifman’s original company two decades ago, and now directs this troupe, which performs cross-dressed renditions of Russian classical staples

The all-male celebration continues as America’s own drag company, the cheekily named Les Ballets Trocadero de Monte Carlo, opens a three-week season at the Joyce Theater on December 19.

The Joyce’s other fall programming offers a dizzying assortment of more than a dozen companies representing genres that sometimes all but defy categorization. Merce Cunningham, for example, is both a patriarch of the deliberately poker-faced postmodern dance as well as veteran of the high modern dance epoch of Martha Graham. He brings his company to the Joyce October 10–15. Well known for mining new technologies, Mr. Cunningham will require spectators to attend the premiere of his “eyeSpace” either toting their own ipods or be prepared to borrow the company’s, which will be distributed at performances.

For some time, critics have complained that the extraordinary dancers of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater do not have enough first-rate choreography to perform. Things may be looking up. During its annual season at City Center, running this year from November 29 until December 31, the company will perform for the first time Tharp’s “Golden Section,” the rousing finale to her 1981 piece “The Catherine Wheel.”There will also be new work from Karole Armitage and ex-Ailey dancer Uri Sands. The specter of young Baryshnikov will rise again when the Ailey company revives “Pas de Duke,” created for Mr. Baryshnikov and Judith Jamison in 1976.

But Baryshnikov won’t be the only hallowed name to resurface.The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave festival opens October 3 with a program dedicated to minimalist composer Steve Reich’s 70th birthday, and featuring works by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Akram Khan choreographed to Reich scores.

One-time special events also enliven this fall’s calendar. The World Music Institute’s “Festival of India” opens October 6 at Symphony Space with a program featuring 69-year-old Pandit Birju Maharaj, a national living treasure whose idiom is kathak, the North Indian classical dance. At Symphony Space September 30 will be a memorial tribute to Katherine Dunham, who died this past May. And on October 23 at City Center, the Career Transition for Dancers’ 21st anniversary Jubilee will host contributions from a vast array of companies from around the globe.