When Javier de Frutos's dance tribute to the great Russian impresario Diaghilev premiered in London on 13 October, the work – with its deformed pope, pregnant nuns and wild sex – received a mixed reception: walkouts and boos combined with an ecstatic response from its fans.

It was a succès de scandale, recalling the brawls at the premiere of The Rite of Spring in 1913, which Diaghilev famously commissioned. The following day, the BBC announced it would broadcast the piece, along with three other new dance works commissioned by Sadler's Wells in honour of Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes.

But last month it became clear that the BBC had decided pull the transmission of De Frutos's work, set for a pre-watershed slot on Friday on BBC4 – and now de Frutos is hitting back at a decision he believes is "silly as well as dangerous".

He said: "Obviously Jerry Springer the Opera [which elicited 55,000 complaints when broadcast on the BBC in 2005] was a watershed. It seems that we still live in a society where a small minority has the power to take away the right of the majority to see things. This seems absurd, especially in the case of BBC4. The knitting channel has marginally more viewers than they do."

According to the composer Thomas Adès, who saw the work at Sadler's Wells theatre: "To pull it from the programme is a shocking, terrible mistake, and shows a disgraceful, pathetic and worrying loss of nerve on the part of the BBC. I am abrim with disgust at the BBC's behaviour … all they needed to do was broadcast it later [in the evening].

"There should be much more outrage about this not being shown than there was about Jerry Springer's being shown. I thought the work was a masterpiece, a brilliant tribute to the showmanship and provocation of Diaghilev. In content there was nothing you would not see in South Park or Family Guy."

In the words of Guardian dance critic Judith Mackrell: "Cast with a hunchbacked pope, pregnant nuns and horny priests, [the work] is set in a crypt decorated with frescoes of priapic men. Its rituals climax in some of the most graphic scenes of sex and violence seen on the dance stage." She also praised it as "funny and tight … sharply structured and wittily referential".

De Frutos acknowledges that his piece – called Eternal Damnation to Sancho and Sanchez – is unsuitable for a pre-watershed broadcast. But he is angry at the "naivety" of the BBC for assuming that "they could broadcast it before the watershed just because it was ballet. People just simply assumed. And you should never assume in art."

The works were given a pre-watershed slot, according to a BBC spokesman, "because ballet at this time of year is a family thing. You sit down together and watch.

"At the time we commissioned the programme we did not realise that there would be this kind of material in the work."

The BBC announced the broadcast in a press release on 14 October, the day after the work's premiere. De Frutos said he was contacted by the BBC about five weeks ago to be told that the broadcast would be pulled.

He said that his intentions with the work were clear from May, when he started creating the 25-minute piece. "There was access to all this. My studio was open."

The BBC was not involved until relatively late in the process, when it decided to acquire footage that had been created by an outside company for a Sadler's Wells DVD.

However, according to De Frutos: "If you have a piece about the Marquis de Sade, then obviously you don't put it on CBeebies, because it's the wrong slot."

The fact that the piece, like Jerry Springer the Opera, contains material critical of religion, also contributed to the BBC's decision.

"The fact that it's Advent and the programme was essentially part of our Christmas schedule was relevant," said the BBC spokesman.

Jan Younghusband, the BBC's commissioning editor for music and events, said: "It is not my commission so I cannot speak about why a post-watershed work was commissioned for a pre-watershed slot … normally we would edit round anything inappropriate but in this case we can't, because it would destroy the work.

"But obviously it would be good to show Javier's work at some point, which is why I have asked to see him to talk about how we might do so in the future."