Aaron S. Watkin, an affable bearded Canadian, is the new artistic director of English National Ballet. He arrives from Dresden, where he ran a similarly scaled company comfortably subsidised by public funds. Doubtless, he finds what the Arts Council gives ENB meagre to the point of stingy. One may wonder, therefore, what the attraction is, but he certainly inherits from Tamara Rojo a solid organisation and a fine body of dancers, particularly strong on the male side.

His inaugural piece of programming is striking but not altogether successful. It starts gloriously with Balanchine’s Theme and Variations, an essay in his grand tsarist style, set to some noble music by Tchaikovsky, that poses notorious challenges for the leading couple. Baryshnikov considered it the most technically difficult ballet he had ever performed and remembers feeling that his legs would drop off after his solo.

There was no mistaking Francesco Gabriele Frola’s anxiety as he launched into an impossible series of pirouettes and double tours, but he tackled these feats with something like flair. I’d give him eight out of ten, and an A for effort. His partner was the enchanting Ukrainian Katja Khaniukova, coping equally heroically with the intricate footwork of her own solo but only truly blossoming in the gentler, almost bucolic pas de deux that precedes the regal parade of the dazzling finale. Great fun for the audience, even if it leaves the dancers panting.

Two pieces commissioned by Watkin followed. I didn’t care for either of them, but at least he’s tried. American choreographer Andrea Miller has had the peculiar notion of using Stravinsky’s Les Noces to accompany a scenario that follows The Rite of Spring by asking how the family of the girl chosen for a propitiatory human sacrifice might feel about their loss. Not happy at all is the answer: her folks kick up a right old fuss, as she skips about as an unquiet ghost and the community is out to get them.

It’s all cast in Pina Bausch mode, barefoot, with a lot of portentous emoting and pregnant silences. The dancers wear long biblical shifts and seem to be wrestling with themselves. The late sculptor Phyllida Barlow has contributed a hideously ugly set consisting of slats of driftwood covered with mould. This unedifying spectacle is further scuppered by a horrible new full orchestration of Les Noces – I’m amazed Stravinsky’s executors sanctioned it – that bears no relation to the grisly proceedings on stage. In any case, Nijinska’s choreography for this music is among the greatest in the repertory; why does anyone ever think they can better it?

David Dawson has also made an unwise choice in selecting for his ballet Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs – upmarket whale music, celestial and soporific, though sumptuously sung on this occasion by Madeleine Pierard. Strauss’s splurge of flappy, floppy gloopiness is an invitation to strip off and surrender to a state of transcendental ecstasy, and that’s pretty much what happens here. A dozen dancers in nude body suits run entranced in circles around the stage, arms stretched out, the men periodically lifting the women heavenwards. They all do this beautifully, particularly Emma Hawes and Aitor Arrieta. But without any real change of mood or metre, it becomes hypnotically tedious.

The remainder of ENB’s season looks pretty dull, the one novelty being a version of Carmen (groan) by Johan Inger next March. Watkin needs to find new stories to tell, as well as mining the archives for neglected gems. Most importantly, he should develop a more flexible approach to touring the regions. Only ten nights outside London isn’t enough to justify the company calling itself ‘National’. The raw material is there and fortune favours the bold – go for it.