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 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 the renowned Slovene 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 and brought him worldwide recognition for his distinctive choreographic style.

His unique 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 highly acclaimed full-length ballet Faust in 2018.
Over the past decade, Clug has developed a successful collaboration with Nederlands Dans Theatre, 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, his new creation for the Staatsballett Berlin, A Midsummer Night’s Dream premiered to great acclaim and quickly became a major success. With this work, his collaboration with composer Milko Lazar reached new dimensions, and Lazar’s commissioned score was widely praised. Meanwhile, Peer Gynt continues its international success and, in the same year, entered the repertoire of the prestigious Teatro alla Scala.

This season, Clug expands his artistic scope further as he stages and choreographs his first opera, Castor at Pollux by Jean-Philippe Rameau, for the Grand Théâtre de Genève.

His works have been presented by the Royal Ballet of Flanders, Vienna State Ballet, National Ballet of Portugal (Lisbon), Dortmund Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Ballet Basel, Czech National Ballet in Prague, San Francisco Dance Works, Station Zuid Company, Croatian National Ballet (Zagreb and Rijeka), National Ballet of Romania (Bucharest), Aalto Ballett Essen, Bitef Dance Company (Belgrade), Graz Tanz, Ukrainian National Ballet (Kyiv), Ballett des Staatstheaters am Gärtnerplatz (Munich), Ballett des Staatstheaters Augsburg, Hessisches Staatsballett (Wiesbaden), West Australian Ballet (Perth), Novosibirsk State Ballet, Dortmund Ballet, Ballett des Staatstheaters Nürnberg, Armenian National Ballet and the Greek National Ballet.

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 Benois de la Danse Award 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 2025, was appointed as Artist-in-Residence with Dortmund Ballet, alongside the choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, under the new artistic leadership of Jaš Otrin.

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.

(Information as of December 2025)