jquery/cycle lite/dynamic css menu not working together nicely

jquery/cycle lite/dynamic css menu not working together nicely

Hello,
I'm using jquery 1.8 (tried all other versions too) with cycle lite slideshow (http://malsup.com/jquery/cycle/lite/) and a menu system dynamically generated by CSS (with jquery helpers for IE - http://qrayg.com/experiment/cssmenus/)

What is happening is my menu pops up over the top of the slideshow but while it works in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc, in all versions of IE (upto and including 10) whenever the mouse hits a gap in the menu the menu clears itself. So it appears that the slideshow code is somehow getting focus and dropping the menu I think. When I don't have the slideshow below it, it works fine.

You can see it here: http://balletlorent.com/newsite/index.html

and for it working without a jquery slideshow:
http://balletlorent.com/newsite/staff.html

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.