Roll up! roll up!

Thought you'd grown out of strong men, performing animals and pretty ladies on tightropes? Well think again, says Brian Logan. Old school circus is back in town and audiences just can't get enough of it

Did you go to the circus when you were young? Did it ride into town one day, with wild animals – lions and tigers and elephants – in tow? Was there a ringmaster in a top hat? Were there drum rolls, sawdust floors and tightropes dizzyingly high? Chances are, you can't say for certain. You think you remember, but it's a long time ago. And, while we're on the subject, whatever happened to the old-fashioned British circus? Some say that it froze in the postures of the past, while tastes in entertainment marched on. Some blame the mauling it received, not from the wild animals it employed, but from those animals' defenders. Several high-profile cases of animal cruelty were exposed, two hundred local councils banned circuses with animals – and circus has struggled ever since to clear its name. But perhaps the answer is more straightforward? "Over the last 30 years," says Nell Gifford, who runs traditional outfit Giffords Circus, "directors have put out some pretty poor shows. And if circus isn't good, of course the public are going to be switched off from it."

But, just as the extent of its decline was exaggerated (Zippo's and Gerry Cottle's still tour the UK to packed houses), so now old-fashioned circus is being taken up by a new generation. Giffords Circus, recipient of the 2002 Jerwood circus award, was founded three years ago by English Literature graduate-turned-circus artiste Nell and her husband Toti. It tours mainly village greens – this year's include Uffington, Minchinhampton and Lechlade, mouth-watering English names all. Giffords takes its lead, aesthetically and artistically, from circuses of the 1930s. It's the circus you think you saw when you were knee-high, but you can't be sure.

Cooped up in her customised wagon (painted maroon and gold, in the signature Giffords style), 30-year-old Nell tells the tale. "When me and my husband got married, it was either get a mortgage, or build a circus. So we built a circus." And, she continues with a not-so-majestic sweep of the arm, "we've lived in this caravan pretty much since day one." Husband Toti stumped up the collateral, courtesy of his landscaping business and the pair snapped up a small tent from the classified ads. Three years later, they own a convoy of caravans and are taking some 20 performers, from as far afield as Ethiopia, on their latest tour.

But they're still in the not-so-Big Top. "The show's put together for a rural audience," explains Gifford. "Villages today need live entertainment. That's why we're this size." Giffords has played in cities – they're in London later this week. But no metropolitan gig beats bowling up in a village, where the circus seems "from the outside and special," says Gifford, "and exotic and strange".

The same romantic approach informs Giffords' retro motif. Their old school outlook is "a play on the line that you hear over and over again if you run a circus, which is: 'Oh, I haven't been since I was a child.' We're trying to tune into people's sense that circus is from the past; that it's a bit bohemian, a bit mysterious and to do with memory. Some people," she adds, "think they remember this show from years ago – 'I'm sure my grandfather used to take me to Giffords...'."

I watch a dress rehearsal in Giffords' snug tent, and sure enough, the show's charm is wholly bound up with its homespun, from-the-mists-of-time character. There's a strongman (from Russia, naturally, and called Oleg) wielding dumb-bells. There are two Argentinian gauchos, Luis and Ariel, whose dramatic expressions add greatly to the pleasure of watching them bash their boleadoras (lassos with balls on) against the floor. And then there is – whisper it! – a Friesian stallion called Ids, who rears on its hind legs at the behest of its diminutive Dutch trainer, Miriam.

Nell Gifford loves horses, and is "trying to reintroduce them into the circus in a thought-through way." Her staff is stuffed with equestrian experts. Her horses "have turn-out time, they move [location] once a week, they never stand in a lorry, they interact with other horses, they interact with people, they have rest time, they have therapy, they have carefully modified diets." I'm getting jealous. "And yet," says Gifford, "dog walkers with their dog on a lead – it's been castrated, it's locked in a flat all day, it can't interact with other dogs without having its neck yanked – will say to us, 'What you're doing with animals is wrong.' That's pure hypocrisy and I hate it."

But that "hypocrisy" has, for at least a decade, been the orthodoxy. Their predicament is improving, but circuses with animals are still frowned upon. In their place has risen a new wave of "contemporary circuses" – think the grungy pyrotechnics of French troupe Archaos, or the slick global extravaganzas of Quebec's Cirque du Soleil. Out with red noses, in with chainsaws and celebrity fans. New Circus is in the ascendancy, and has, among British practitioners, some passionate adherents.

Paul Cockle is managing director of The Generating Company, "probably Britain's biggest contemporary circus company in commercial terms," he says. The Generating Company may be the only positive legacy of the Millennium Dome; it was founded by artistes who performed there. The Dome's investment in circus (it funded the first ever degree course at the HQ of UK circus, the Circus Space, and bankrolled the training of almost 100 aerialists) was, says Cockle, key to the medium's rebirth.

The Generating Company, he goes on, aims "to create great and original circus and to compete with the foreign companies that clean-up in Europe". No talk of romance here. No sawdust either. The company's most recent show, Storm, was staged last year at the Barbican Centre. "We also do the aerial cabaret at the Manumission nightclub in Ibiza," says Cockle. "We performed for Prince Charles at Highgrove and we do a whole bunch of corporate events. Anything that will make us money, really."

It's a whole different philosophy. Giffords is run by family and friends; it deals in mystery and marvel. Cockle talks of circus's right to subsidy. Nell Gifford, whose circus receives modest funding, nevertheless "works on the basis that with or without funding we're going to put the show on the road". Giffords embraces the traditional; the Generating Company embraces precisely the opposite. "I don't think," says Cockle, "that traditional circus can compete on a large-scale stage, putting shows in hotels in Las Vegas or in Disney theme parks."

The disagreement extends to the very nature of the art-form. Exponents of New Circus, which often blends circus with narrative, dance or music, set little store by what Cockle calls "the wow factor". "Traditional skills are important," he adds, "but people need to learn to use them to express themselves, to make a statement, and not just perform fantastic feats." That's not the Giffords way at all. Nell doesn't want circus to tell stories. "I'm not into contriving every act to fit a narrative," she says, "like the jugglers are all throwing bottles around in a bar. I think it's important for some of the acts just to be acts. Then it takes it out of the narrative of day-to-day life. If you knew why the Mona Lisa was smiling, it would lose its magic. "When circus is trying to tell a moral tale or make a political point about something," she says, "I'm not into that at all. It's already saying lots of things, just by being a celebration of skill and coordination and enjoyment."

These are fundamental differences – but perfectly healthy ones. Circus in Britain is no longer just Billy Smart's and custard pies. It's a broad church, which accommodates opposing, and equally successful, approaches. And it's flourishing. "It's so of the moment," says Cockle, "that we'll miss the moment unless we capitalise on it." The Arts Council, which wouldn't touch circus a decade ago, now recognises it as an artistic as well as a commercial concern. "The Council is at the beginning of a relationship with circus," says its head of drama, Nicola Thorold, "which we hope will continue to develop."

And yet, the success of Giffords posts a timely reminder of circus's great natural advantage over other art-forms: it is associated in the public mind with romance. You don't run away from home to fill in funding applications. Circus is unimagined spectacles from far-flung lands. It's sequins and scuzzy glamour. It's footloose and fancy-free. In its legitimate quest for parity with other art-forms, it must take care not to squander the qualities that make it different.

It's dusk, and at the Giffords dress rehearsal, a man in Highland regalia is playing the bagpipes while three dancing girls march around, a-thumping their drums. A huddle of passers-by have gathered by the entrance to the Big Top, and are peering in. "People enjoy the circus," says Nell Gifford. "They're fascinated by it, they wander up to us to see what's going on." Some horses whinny in the background, and a fiddle plays. "I mean," she says, "who wouldn't be drawn in by that?"

Giffords Circus: Brighton Festival (01273 709709), today and Mon; Hoxton Square, London EC1 (01242 572573), Thur to 27 May; tours UK to 1 Sept. For details and tickets call 01242 572573. 'Philip Astley: Inventor of the Circus' by Nell Gifford will be published by Short Books on 3 June