I forgot to add La Nouba..not another fav though I only really liked the trampoline up the side fo the building bit and the music was pretty dull.

I've seen live: Saltimbanco, Quidam, O (twice), Dralion, Varekai, Zumanity, and Allegria.

On video, I've watched La Cirque Reinvente and Nouvelle Experience.

Next time I hit Vegas, I plan to see Mystere. And one of these days I'll go back to the Big Mouse to see La Nouba.

O, in my opinion, is the best show of all. Varekai is by far my favorite road show, and has the best music. Dralion scores low marks on my chart.

I have seen Varekai (x2), Mystere, O, and Alegria. I am seeing La Nouba in Nov..that is if the Hurricane didn't destroy all of Walt Disney World. My favorite has to be Verakai and my least (I know people will hate me) was "O" I thought it was very over-priced for what I got. Also, I went in with high expectation after seeing Varekai and Mystere in previous year and was sadly let down, though the music was great. The fact was that in the "O" show they messed up about 4 times so I have to add that in with the fun factor

On DVD I seen Journey of Man, Quidam, Dralion, Alegria, and Varekai.

On CD I have pretty all the music from all the shows I've seen. My favorite CD is Alegria with Varekai with a close second...there is a Varekai CD that has three CD's (original music CD, DVD (2 music videos), and then a bonus live CD.

Hey Cybele,

I know Dralion's your least favorite, and was curious as to why you didn't care for it that much.

=)

Jess

I've seen Alegria twice, Varekai, and O. All the others on DVD and VHS (unfortunately.) I will be seeing their new show in January. Extremely excited!!

My list is very similar to Cybele's (for good reason), the only difference being I didn't get the chance to see Le Cirque Reinvente and I made the time to see Zumanity at the last trade show in Vegas I went to.

While I enjoyed all of them to greater or lesser degrees, a few stand out in my memory. Nouvelle Experience, as the show that first introduced me to these shows, will always stand out. Quidam was amazing for the sets if the story was a tad more bizarre than usual. Varekai had stunning music (when my 3 year old son was an infant the Varekai recording, as pale a shadow of the show as it was, would almost always soothe him).

I'm already getting excited to see the next show in SF this winter - I need to get tickets!

I've seen Nouvelle Experience, Alegria, Mystère, Quidam, Dralion, Varekai, Kà, and O live. Watched Solstrom and Saltimbanco on TV, along with a few of the shows on Bravo.
After recently seeing O, all I can say is that I was thoroughly disappointed. The music was gorgeous, but that's all it had going for it...a lot of the acts just had waaay too much going on with no central focus. Both Kà and O are starting to suffer from a tremendous amount of thought and work going into the technical side of things (The water displacement stage in O and the extremely versatile hydraulic stage in Kà are simply astounding) but no focus on story like all of the previous Cirque shows.
Alegria and Quidam are my top favorites; all-around fantastic shows full of emotion that really drew you into the action on stage. O was just extremely pretentious and superficial...several strained moments where the audience was unsure on whether to clap or not, and when clapping occurred, it was very short and subtle. I didn't walk out of it amazed as I usually did with all the other Cirque's. O started this transfer from emotional and story/message-driven artwork into more technical shows, and ultimately just came across as a mish-mash of too many ideas conflicting on the stage at once. I was constantly likening it to a moving Dali or Magritte painting without the higher meanings of Dali or Magritte behind them. Superficial at best...

Kà has a lot of amazing sequences in it, yet the story was really badly presented with little to no motivation for character development. Events just happen and you have to follow along with them, with the director hoping you have a short attention span so he doesn't have to give too much backstory or develop the characters...very much unlike the brilliant exposition and drive in both Alegria and Quidam. All the money went to the visual flair and technical sides of the performance rather into turning it into a whole experience.

Varekai luckily didn't follow this path and turned out to be an absolutely fantastic show, music/story/performance wise. I hope to see more shows like it, and I can't wait to see Corteo and Zumanity!

Quidam: First one I ever saw, and it was way cool.
Mystere: one of the best. Second one I ever saw.
Saltimbanco: The best! Got me in on the act!
Alegria: Saw a bunch of times in Biloxi, and thought it was well done.
O: sucked! I expected soooo much more. This and Zumanity are the only Cirques I've seen only once.
La Nouba: Seen at least a dozen times, love it!
Drallion: Great show! Even did it VIP in Houston.
Zumanity: No, Cirque just couldn't pull off the sexual side...
Varekai: Last new one I saw before moving to Belize. Loved it!

Seen around 8 knockoffs too, like:
Cirque Ingeneux: Great strong man routine, and Kitaro did the music!
Kaliedoscape: Worst copy of Cirque ever!!!!! The Cirque Abortion! I Hate R. Bros for this!
Balagan: In Biloxi, same stage as Alegria, and it was really good.
Aeros: cool use of cheap props.
Laser Vaudeville: although this is a stretch from Cirque...

All in all, around 57 times, and I hope to see them that many more...
Probably won't happen since they don't come down here.

Let's - see... I've seen Mystere 5 times, O once, Zumanity once, Saltimbanco once and Verekai once. Hoping to see either Ka and/or Love at some point this year.

I love them all, although I do have a special place in my heart for Mystere just because it was my first.