Selected Writings
Some texts linger in the margins, written in quiet hours and sometimes left to rest in digital drawers. These are fragments, chosen pages from longer conversations and adventures. Some of them became books. Welcome to read, slowly or in passing. // Josefine
Myths, Mountains and Mothers
By Josefine Chiacchiero / September 2025 / Essay in Swedish
While preparing for my work as a hiking guide on the Amalfi Coast, I kept returning to the women: in the stories, the myths, the stone paths and sea winds. Worshipped, silenced, and still whispering through the landscape. This essay is a personal attempt to connect the many threads of female health, knowledge, and resistance in Campania: from Trotula, the pioneering physician of medieval Salerno, to Axel Munthe’s compassionate care on Capri, to the fierce, complex women in Elena Ferrante’s Naples. In a region where goddesses once ruled and digital violence now echoes, their stories still shape the terrain.
Memory’s Dance and Music
By Josefine Chiacchiero / September 2025 / Essay in Swedish
Moments of music and movement can awaken something deeply human, even when illness has silenced words. Since 2012 I have worked in cultural projects within elder care, together with dancers, singers and musicians. We have seen how a rhythm stirs a foot, how a melody brings back a journey, and how art fills a room with memory and presence. This is a work shared with many out there: honouring life’s stories, carrying them forward through art, and creating new moments of dignity and joy.
Dancing Lions – Movement and Imagination
By Josefine Chiacchiero / September 2025 / Essay in Swedish
Teaching dance has always been, for me, about more than steps and rhythm: it is about awakening imagination and creating spaces where the dancers can explore who they are. I once asked a girl to move like an elegant horse; she refused, and instead insisted on being a fierce lion. Her proud, powerful strides transformed the room, and soon the others followed. For me, this is the essence of dance pedagogy: giving people, in this text the children, the courage to discover expression, relation and learning through the voice of the body.
From Convention to Car Boot Magic
By Josefine Chiacchiero / September 2025 / Essay in Swedish
In Sweden, performing arts for children are both a right and a political project. Since 2008 the state grant Skapande skola has brought professional artists into classrooms, making culture part of everyday education but also tying it to political goals, evaluations and measurable outcomes.
As an artist, I have stood in the middle of this field: carrying sets through winter slush, turning classrooms into theatres, meeting children with curiosity and wonder. Children’s theatre and dance here exist at a crossroads between vision and bureaucracy, artistry and entrepreneurship, rights and political agendas.
Wonders in Wallonia
By Josefine Chiacchiero / July 2025 / Text in Swedish
In recent years, I have had the privilege of exploring parts of Wallonia, a region in Belgium that was previously unknown to me. I’ve discovered a world full of charming villages, rolling landscapes, and rich culture. Wallonia is a place where history and modernity blend in unique ways. Have a look at some small glimpses among many wonders!
The Moving History of Training
By Josefine Chiacchiero / June 2025 / Book, draft in Swedish
This book weaves together insights from my academic background and my experience as a group training and dance instructor. It’s enriched by digital sources I regularly turn to – podcasts, articles, research – which inform both my own learning and my teaching practice.
Structured as a journey through imagined training halls of the past, each chapter invites the reader into a different era – from ancient gymnasiums to modern-day gyms – where history, body and culture meet.
The Moving History of Training is a living project: an evolving text shaped by curiosity, reflection and movement. Writing helps me think, teach, connect and ask better questions about the body, its meanings, and its memory. If you’re interested in accessing the current full version, feel free to get in touch.
A Tale from Cilento – Beyond Amalfi
By Josefine Chiacchiero / May 2025 / Article in Swedish
Writing about something you hold dear is no easy task. The words get tangled up in all the adjectives and wild fennel. I could share a hundred tips – but which ones should I choose? And what about you, the reader – are you drawn to hiking trails, wines, village festivals, or simply the stillness under a lemon tree? Or do you prefer to discover things on your own?
This isn’t your typical travel guide. It’s an exploration. A first attempt at something I’ve been thinking about for a long time: what could I share from this place on earth? Perhaps it’s a travel article written as a fairytale. Perhaps it’s an attempt to capture moods, scents and fleeting moments, rather than lists and advice. This is how it turned out this time – have a look at some of the drafts!
A Swedish Folk Dance Dream in Marrakech
By Josefine Chiacchiero / November 2024 / Article in Swedish
It felt like a mirage: along the elegant M Avenue in the heart of Marrakech’s modern quarter, framed by palm trees and terracotta façades, a group of Swedish folk dancers suddenly appeared in full costume. The scene was so unexpected, so vivid, that for a moment I wondered if I was dreaming—lost in a memory of home.
Marrakech – A Personal Guide to Stillness, Beauty and Magic
By Josefine Chiacchiero / November 2024 / Article in Swedish
Marrakech has become something of a recurring destination for me. I’ve visited the city five or six times, and once even studied there. Despite its intensity, or perhaps because of it, Marrakech holds a truly special place in my heart. This is a guide to twelve of my personal favourites: places and experiences where Marrakech is given space to breathe and blossom, and where you, as a visitor, can discover the city with both attentiveness and wonder.
Meeting Dora and her Greek Dance Theatre
By Josefine Chiacchiero / November 2024 / Book in English
This book is a journey through several encounters and interviews in Athens. It is also an attempt to understand what dance can be beyond the definition of movement and music and rather a source of identity, belonging, resistance and joy of life. For access to the complete book, welcome to get in touch.
Thoughts in Motion – on Creating Training
By Josefine Chiacchiero / June 2024 / Reflective text in Swedish
What happens before a training class begins? How is an hour of movement, breath and presence shaped – and why does it take the form it does? In this text, I share some reflections from the studio. On the balance between structure and spontaneity, tradition and innovation. On how weather, method and music all play a role – and why, for me, a class is never just a routine, but always a living process.
Sounds of the Past in Contemporary Stockholm
By Josefine Chiacchiero / June 2024 / Article in Swedish
In this article, which I wrote during the subsequent financial crisis, I describe the significant hosting of REMA Conference 2024 – a gathering point for Europe’s leading figures in early music – and the international festival that followed in Stockholm’s Old Town. It is also a story about a stage with enormous potential, yet whose future remains uncertain.
a powerful reimagining of the forest
By Josefine Chiacchiero / May 2024 / Article in Swedish
Designed by Erik Gullberg and Groundfloor Studio, the exhibition Skogen invites visitors on a sensory and immersive journey through seven distinct clearings, exploring humanity’s complex relationship with nature.
Lalla Cassel – A Forgotten Force in Swedish Dance
By Josefine Chiacchiero / May 2021 – May 2026 / Book in Swedish
A dance studio in flames. Hundreds of costumes and choreographies vanish in the smoke, and with them, a piece of Swedish dance history. Who was Lalla Cassel, the woman who shaped generations of dancers, toured across Europe and was awarded King Christian X’s Freedom Medal?
In my project, I uncover her story from archives, photo albums, press material, and interviews with the few “Cassel Girls” still alive today. The result is a vivid account of movement, discipline, a longing for freedom and of a woman who refused to stand still. The manuscript is currently in progress.
Thinking with the Body,
an essay on Dance & AI
By Josefine Chiacchiero / November 2023 / Essay in Swedish
At the intersection of body and language, of practice and theory, these reflections have taken shape: on what dance can be, how it communicates, and the role it plays in a society where movement is not always given space.
The United Nations of Dance – a truly global dance gathering in Athens
By Josefine Chiacchiero / July 2022 / Article in Swedish
Imagine dancers, choreographers, and researchers from all corners of the world coming together in the heart of Athens – a city where ancient gods seem to watch over every step. This is the setting for the annual congress of the International Dance Council (CID), often referred to as the ”United Nations of Dance.”
Rendezvous with Authentic Baguettes
By Josefine Chiacchiero / April 2023 / Article in Swedish
Flour, water, salt and yeast had suddenly taken centre stage. Naturally, I began to reflect on this crusty national icon through memories from my own travels in France – from scratched palates in Rodez to breakfast rituals involving baguette boats sailing in hot chocolate. And of course, I paid tribute in the most fitting way: by biting into a classic Parisian Jambon Beurre. Sometimes, bread really do tell a whole story.
Words like images.
Images like words.
Here I collect fragments of texts – in English and Swedish – sometimes sparked by a photograph, a phrase, or simply a single word. Poems, song lyrics, translations. Fragments of something larger – or just enough in their own right.
Josefine Chiacchiero 