Edward Clug

When enrolling at the National Ballet School in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) in 1983, the 10-year-old child saw a way out of the repressive dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. After enduring very harsh years during his schooling, the communist regime collapsed in 1989. Two years later, in 1991, he completed his studies and, in September of the same year, he received his first engagement at the Slovene National Theatre (SNT) and began his career in Maribor, just as Slovenia was taking its first steps as a newly independent country after leaving Yugoslavia. Here, he met theatre director Tomaž Pandur, with whom he began collaborating as a dancer in his avant-garde productions. Recognizing his creative potential, Pandur invited him to choreograph the performance Babylon, which premiered in 1996. After this first choreographic experience, Clug embarked on a new artistic journey. In 1998, he created his first independent project, Tango, together with costume designer Leo Kulaš and set designer Marko Japelj, who became his constant creative team. Later, in 2008, composer Milko Lazar joined them with the project Prêt-à-Porter, and their collaboration has continued intensively ever since. In 2003, the newly appointed general director of SNT, Danilo Rošker, named him artistic director of the ballet. Clug began leading the company in new and distinctive directions. In 2005, he created Radio & Juliet, set to the music of Radiohead, which became an international success, touring to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts, to Colombia, Brazil, Hong Kong Singpore and South Korea, among others.
His interpretation of Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps in 2012 and the breakthrough of his first full-length narrative ballet, Peer Gynt, in 2015 established him as an important choreographic voice of his generation. He began collaborating with major ballet companies around the world while successfully putting the Maribor Ballet ensemble on the international dance map. Throughout the years, Edward Clug has developed a strong and enduring relationship with the Stuttgart Ballet where he has created several shorter ballets and, more recently, a new version of the beloved classical work The Nutcracker. He has also built close ties with the Zurich Ballet where he created a number of works, including the full-length ballet Faust in 2018. Over the past decade, Clug has developed a successful collaboration with Nederlands Dans Theatre (NDT), creating several pieces for both NDT 2 and NDT 1. He was also invited to create new works for the Bolshoi Ballet, where he staged The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov’s famously “impossible” masterpiece. In 2025 he created A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Staatsballett Berlin, in spring 2026 he staged and choreographes Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Castor et Pollux at Grand-Thêâtre de Genève.
In addition to the aforementioned companies, his works have been presented by Aalto Ballett Essen, Hessisches Staatsballett, the ballet companies at the Augsburg, Munich (Gärtnerplatz) and Nuremberg State Theatres, Ballett Basel, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Vienna State Ballet, the Czech, Croatian, Romanian, Greek, Ukrainian and Armenian National Ballet companies, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens and West Australian Ballet, to name but a few. He has received numerous national and international awards and was nominated for the Golden Mask Award in 2010 for the project Quattro. He was honored with Slovenia’s highest cultural distinctions: the Prešeren Foundation Award in 2005 and the Glazer Charter in 2008. In 2017, he was nominated for the prestigious Prix Benois de la Danse for Handman with Nederlands Dans Theater 2, and in 2019, for the German Theatre Prize “Der Faust” for Patterns in ¾ with Stuttgart Ballet.  In 2022, he was awarded the Silver Order of Merit by the Republic of Slovenia and the Medal for Cultural Merit by the Republic of Romania for his contribution to culture.
Since the 2025-26 season, he is Artist-in-Residence with Dortmund Ballet under the artistic leadership of Jaš Otrin.

(Information as of September 2026)