When enrolling at the National ballet school in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) in 1983, the child of 10 years of age saw a way out from the repressive dictatorship of Ceausescu. After very harsh years during schooling, the communism regime collapses in 1989. Two years after in 1991 he completes his study and in September the same year he tries his chance at the Slovene National Theatre in Maribor. He gets his first engagement and starts his career in Maribor as Slovenia makes its first steps as a newborn country after exiting Yugoslavia.
Here he meets famous Slovene theatre director Tomaž Pandur, with whom he starts to collaborate as a dancer in his avant-garde productions. Noticing his creative potential Pandur asks him to create the choreography for the performance Babylon, which premiered in 1996.
After his first choreographic experience, Clug embarks on a new artistic journey and in 1998 he creates 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 joins the team in the project Pret-a-Porter and they continue to collaborate intensively ever since.
In 2003 the newly appointed general director of SNT, Danilo Rošker assign him as artistic director of the ballet and Clug starts to lead the company towards new and distinctive directions. In 2005 he creates Radio & Juliet on the music of Radiohead, which became an international hit and drew the international attention to himself, due to his specific choreographic style.
His unique interpretation of Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps in 2012 and the breakthrough of his first narrative full-length ballet Peer Gynt in 2015, defines him as an important choreographic voice of his generation.
He starts to collaborate with other ballet companies around the world and equally succeeds in putting the Maribor Ballet ensemble on the international dancing map.
Trough out the years Clug has developed a strong relation with Stuttgart Ballet, where he created several shorter ballets and recently a new version of the beloved classic The Nutcracker. He has build strong ties with Zurich ballet where among other pieces he created the much-acclaimed full-length ballet Faust in 2018.
In the last years he started a successful collaboration with the Netherlands Dance Theatre where he created several pieces for NDT2 and NDT1. Both critics and audiences praised his work for the prestigious company. He was also invited to create new works for Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow, where he succeeded to take on the “impossible” Bulgakov’s masterpiece Master and Margarita and he recently created a contemporary version of Coppelia for Ballet Basel.
His works were presented by Royal Ballet of Flanders, Vienna State Ballet, National Ballet in Lisbon, Grand Ballets Canadians Montreal, Czech National Ballet in Prague, San Francisco Dance Works, 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, StaatsBallett am Gartner Platz Munich, Augsburg Ballet, Hessisches Staatsballett Wiesbaden, West Australian Ballet in Perth, Novosibirsk State Ballet, Dortmund Ballet, Ballet Nürnberg.
He received several national and international awards for his work and was nominated for the Golden Mask award in 2010 for the project Quattro. He was distinguished with the highest Slovene prizes in culture, the Award of the Prešern Foundation in 2005 and the Glazer Charter in 2008. He was nominated in 2017 for the prestigious award Benois de la Danse for the piece Handman with Nederland’s Dance Theatre 2 and in 2019 for the German Theatre Prize Der Faust for the piece Patterns in ¾ with Stuttgart Ballet.
In 2022 he was honored with The Silver Order of Merit by the state of Slovenia and The Medal for Cultural Merit by the state of Romania for his contribution in culture.
