The idea to do the Divine Comedy as a dance performance seems like a suicide; and a tempting one as such...
It is an irony that I found my motif in Dante’s own ‘suicide attempt,’ a walk through the realm of death while you are still among the living.
I wonder if he would do it again today, and what his Divina would be like.
The structure of the poem would probably be the same: three different levels of the soul’s state, perhaps he would add some modern, sophisticated sins and would probably change the order of their gravity relative to the old ones. Many things would be different but I am sure the passage of time would never change his love of Beatrice.
My intention with this performance was to create a situational space, more a lateral than a parallel vision of the three levels from the poem, where we find eight dancers in unusual situations. The Inferno is placed in the Standard Dance Competition, with the dancers appearing in both functions - of competitors and judges. The Standard Dance Form depicts very well the criteria imposed by the modern society: be perfect, be a competitor, be artificially beautiful and wear a number (which is followed carefully), which can easily be erased and changed while we are still alive.
Dialogue and interaction between the real and the surreal is what the relative principle of my concept is. We all have different perceptions of what we see and how we interpret our experiences in regard to the object we are observing. Time will draw us together for one hour, within which the very time will have a different meaning for each one of us. For example, the Purgatory in my version is timed to last for 12 minutes, which equals to the spaghetti preparation time. The same amount of time has a different length in the theatre than in Heaven: I want to take a bite of Dante’s love, to chew it for a few hundreds of years and then, when my facial muscles get tired and I lose all my teeth, to swallow it slowly and fall fast asleep. I’d wake up the following morning and quickly set off into the ordinary day as a consequent number with its consequent position.  
INFERNO (SEE YOU) IN HEAVEN! This is the idea and motif of our path.
Welcome aboard.
Edward Clug

Staying true to the leading concept of the Bitef Theatre to encourage and promote new styles and tendencies in theatre, the Bitef Theatre has made a U-turn and profiled its repertoire in two directions: on the one hand pure theatrical expression, embodied in the work of the Bitef Dance Company, and on the other hand, plays which are not necessarily defined in a precise way in regard to genre, but are focusing on the bordering areas between the dramatic, physical, musical and visual theatre. The Company’s work includes classical and contemporary dance training, as well as cooperation with leading domestic and foreign choreographers and directors. 

In the 2011/2012 season the Bitef Theatre continues its double repertoire mission – the further development of dance theatre with ongoing improvements to the Belgrade dance scene, primarily through the productions of the Bitef Dance Company as well as numerous guest appearances by domestic and international dance productions. On the other hand, the Bitef Theatre continues its expansion of a platform for new and engaged theatre productions.

The season’s title ‘Boundaries’ indicates an exploration of the boundaries of the body and of physical expression in dance theatre, as well as the political and geographical boundaries or borders, real or imagined, which limit or challenge us to overcome and question them through artistic expression.

Edward Clug received his ballet training at the National Ballet School in Cluj-Napoca, graduating in 1991. That year he joined the Slovene National Theatre (SNG) in Maribor where he was appointed Ballet Director in 2003. Performing Clug’s choreographies, the Ballet of Maribor’s SNG has widely toured the international festival circle. Clug has won a number of international prizes for choreography in ballet and dance (Varna, Moscow, Hanover and Nagoya). He has also been awarded the highest Slovene prize for achievements in the field of culture – the Prešern Foundation Award in 2005, as well as the Glazer Charter in 2008.