"The name
of the company suggests that they plunge into things headfirst. This
is true in two sense of the word: they are passionately energetic,
but they are also deeply thoughtful. . . . Headlong's 'Ulysses' takes
liberties with Joyce's Ulysses–joyful, unexpected liberties,
like the ones Joyce himself took when transposing Homer's ancient
Greek odyssey into the Dublin of 1904. Headlong takes Ulysses
into another place and time: to a city with an appropriately Greek
name, Philadelphia, at the end of the century Joyce's story inaugurated.
. . . Headlong preserves the spirit of Joyce's stylistic changes by
structuring the dance as a succession of skits, each of which dramatizes
a different aspect of Ulysses as it might be experienced at
this moment in time. Most importantly, Headlong has captured what
might be called the central fact of Ulysses: that although
most people think of the book as being difficult to understand, it
is actually about that very issue–the universal, even mundane
experience of being misunderstood; by one's friends, acquaintances,
lovers, and spouses. Like Ulysses, Headlong's performance spotlights
the humor and pathos of these moments of broken connection, and the
freedom and yearning they inspire."