Only three groups are on tap for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts' Signature Dance Series this season, but they're goodies.

Israel's Batsheva Ensemble, which under the inspired direction of choreographer Ohad Naharin has earned international attention for its intensely energetic, sensual and forward-looking dances, will visit on Dec. 5.

March brings The Joffrey Ballet, the troupe that infused classical ballet with youthful, American energy and style. The Joffrey will present Edward Liang's The Age of Innocence, which, despite its title, is inspired not by novelist Edith Wharton but by the female characters of Jane Austen. (The troupe's artistic successor in repertory and philosophy, the vibrant young Aspen Santa Fe Ballet which is led by two former Joffrey dancers and specializes in new works or revivals of significant 20th century dances, visits the Duncan Theatre in Lake Worth on March 19 and 20.)

Finally, the perpetually exciting Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater returns to the Arsht in May.

Budget cutbacks will deprive Miami City Ballet's season of new ballets, but some repertory treasures will return. Among them: Paul Taylor's sometimes rollicking, sometimes dark Company B, set to World War II-era hits from the Andrews Sisters; Twyla Tharp's rocket-powered ``The Golden Section'' from her famous work The Catherine Wheel, with music by David Byrne, and Jerome Robbins' haunting, lyrical masterpiece Dances at a Gathering.

MCB's Balanchine works include the choreographer's dark, sweeping Symphony in Three Movements, the Broadway bauble Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, with its gangsters and showgirls, and the jaunty, jazzy Who Cares?, set to music by George Gershwin.

Mixed-ability dance combines disabled and normally abled dancers in surprising and compelling ways. Longtime local troupe Karen Peterson and Dancers, a pioneer of the genre, presents its video dance fusion work Mano a Mano on Oct. 3 at the Byron Carlyle Theater. And one of the best mixed-ability troupes, San Francisco's AXIS Dance Company, which has commissioned pieces by a who's who of contemporary artists, appears in a new work by celebrated modern-dance choreographer David Dorfman during the Florida Dance Festival's Winterfest, starting Dec. 27. The event is co-presented and co-commissioned by Tigertail Productions.

Winterfest also showcases a broad spectrum of the Florida dance scene, with its Florida Dances and Miami Dances programs, the second featuring winners of Miami-Dade County's choreography fellowships.

Another local favorite, Arts Ballet Theatre, presents its original version of Stravinsky's Firebird at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts on Oct. 4.

Some cutting-edge international dance artists will launch new visions from South Florida stages. On Nov. 7 at the Colony Theatre, Miami Light Project presents Benin-born, Paris-based Julie Dossavi, who mixes African dance with street-and-club culture and then sets the result to live African percussion and electronic music. In April, for a miniseries celebrating Catalan culture, Tigertail brings to the Colony the innovative Spanish duo of Jordi Cortés and Damián Muñoz in Olelés, inspired by Embers, a 1942 novel about estrangement and reunion.

Miami Dade College's Cultura del Lobo series has South African choreographer/dancer Gregory Maqoma in the solo piece Beautiful Me, accompanied by four South African musicians, Nov. 20-21 at the Byron Carlyle; and the dance-theater work City of Paper, in which China's Yin Mei partners with Tibetan dancer Sang Jijia for a look at her home town of Luoyang, where paper was invented.

Ray Sullivan and his Miami Contemporary Dance Company will celebrate their 10th anniversary with a season highlighted by a pair of ambitious-sounding new works, Carmen and Bolero, Nov. 13-14 and 20-21 at the Colony.

Finally, fans of dance can check out Miami's next generation of performing artists at the Here and Now Festival March 4-6 at the Arsht Center, co-presenter with Miami Light Project. Some of South Florida's best artists, including playwright/performer Teo Castellanos and choreographer Rosie Herrera, presented their first major pieces at Here and Now.