What does it say about the state of contemporary ballet when a costume and set designer curates a program with more acumen and imagination than a star principal at the Royal Ballet?

Maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise: A designer, like a director, has a visual point of view as well as the ability to grasp a theatrical world and not just, say, the beauty of the line of a leg. As the Joyce Theater wrapped up its ballet festival last week, it was the designer Jean-Marc Puissant — in truth, he is a former dancer — who arranged an evening of intriguingly c ontrasting parts: a young female choreographer with a taste for restraint; a Maurice Béjart duet dusted off for a new generation; and a vintage work by Kenneth MacMillan, light in tone yet vibrant in appearance.

Part of the festival overseen by Kevin O’Hare, the Royal’s director, Mr. Puissant’s program, Tuesday through Thursday, may have featured older works — the Béjart and the MacMillan date to the 1970s — but it felt fresh compared to the final program, which began Friday and was organized by the dancer Edward Watson.