'Little House' returns to the prairie

Stage and screen stars Estelle Parsons and Melissa Gilbert. Jazz stylist Nnenna Freelon and opera great Harolyn Blackwell. An Afro-Brazilian dance company. "Extreme" taiko drummers from Japan.

St. Paul's Ordway Center this week pulled back the curtain on an eclectic, globe-hopping 2009-2010 slate of Broadway, world music and dance shows.

The new season includes the launch of the national tour of "Little House on the Prairie," which premiered last year at the Guthrie Theater and was a sellout. Star Melissa Gilbert will reprise her role as Ma Ingalls in a production that is said to be tweaked and redesigned (Oct. 13-25).

The Broadway roster also includes Tracy Letts' Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama "August: Osage County," a searing piece about a dysfunctional Oklahoma family in which Parsons, 81, will reprise her Broadway turn as the family's cancer-stricken, pill-popping matriarch (March 12-21, 2010).

The Broadway offerings are rounded out by the Disney musical "Beauty and the Beast," this year's holiday offering (Dec. 15-Jan 3, 2010), and director Bartlett Sher's celebrated revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific," which won seven Tony Awards last year (May 4-16, 2010).

The Ordway's dance titles span the globe. The upcoming dance troupes are: the Bad Boys of Dance, the Rasta Thomas-led ballet company that incorporates hip-hop, jazz and rock influences in its gymnastic choreography (Oct. 30); Dance Brazil, which for three decades has colored its modern dances with capoeira and Afro-Brazilian influences (Feb. 19, 2010); Diavolo, a Los Angeles-based modern company that fuses athletic movement, gymnastics and acting (March 25, 2010), and dre.dance, a socially engaged New York-based company that will be making its Midwest premiere (May 20, 2010).

Musically, the Ordway also hops all over the map, from Andalucian flamenco singer Yasmin Levy (Nov. 1) to Japan's extreme taiko drummers Shidara (Feb. 24, 2010). The lineup also includes a celebration of the work of Edward (Duke) Ellington by jazz vocalist Freelon and opera superstar Blackwell (Feb. 21, 2010).

The Ordway will also partner with VocalEssence to present the socially conscious vocal group Sweet Honey in the Rock for the 20th annual Witness concert (Feb. 14, 2010).

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390