Edward Clug

Slovenian choreographer, artistic director of the Slovenian National Theatre Ballet in Maribor. Born in Beius, Romania, Clug graduates from the National Ballet School in Cluj-Napoca in 1991. The same year he gets his first engage- ment at the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor and dedicates his career, for more than 30 years, to the country that adopted him. Relatively early he discovers his call for choreography and after few successful pieces he is appointed artistic director of the Ballet in 2003. In 2005 he creates Radio & Juliet on the music of Radiohead, which became an international hit and drew him the international attention. His unique interpretation of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps in 2012 and the break through of his first narrative full-length ballet Peer Gynt in 2015 define him as an important choreographic voice of his generation. He starts to collaborate with other ballet com- panies around the world and equally succeeds in putting the Maribor Ballet ensemble on the international dancing map. Throughout the years Clug has developed a strong relation with Stuttgart Ballet where he is preparing at the moment the premiere of a new version of The Nutcracker. He has built strong ties with Zurich Ballet, where he created the much-acclaimed full-length ballet Faust in 2018. In the last years he started a successful collaboration with the Nederlands Dans Theater, where he created several projects for NDT2 and NDT1. He was also invited to create new works for Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, where he recently succeeded to take on the “impossible” Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita. His works were also presented by Royal Ballet of Flanders, Vienna State Ballet, National Ballet in Lisbon, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Basel Ballet, Czech National Ballet in Prague, Station Zuid Company, Croatian National Ballet in Zagreb, Croatian National Ballet in Rijeka, National Ballet in Bucharest, Aalto Ballett Essen, Bitef Dance Company Belgrade, Graz Tanz, Ukranian National Ballet Kiev, Ballett des Staatstheaters am Gärtnerplatz Munich, Augsburg Ballet, Hessisches Staatsballett Wiesbaden, West Australian Ballet in Perth, Novosibirsk State Ballet and Dortmund Ballet. He received several national and international awards for his work and was nominated for the prestigious award Benois de la Danse in 2017 and for the German Theatre Prize Der Faust in 2019. In 2022 he was honoured with The Silver Order of Merit by the state of Slovenia and The Medal for Cultural Merit by the state of Romania for his contributions in culture.