In this thesis I investigate what ‘authenticity’ means in a contemporary popular context and how it is used in the staging of bodies. Furthermore, I analyse works of dance and fashion from the past fifteen years with a focus on their strategies of challenging the notion of ‘bodily authenticity’.

When ‘an authentic body’ is sought by participants or demanded by judges and ‘experts’ on popular makeover and casting TV shows such as The Swan (Fox 2004) or Germany’s Next Topmodel (Pro 7 2006-present) this refers to the physical visualisation of what is perceived/presented as the participants ‘inner self’. I scrutinise the staging techniques and the codes of appearance that bodies have to comply with in order to be deemed ‘authentic’ on the shows. To define them and place them in the history of the idea of ‘bodily authenticity’, I complement my study with an outline of how ‘authenticity’ was understood in the Enlightenment and what techniques were used to stage the body when the concept gained currency, for instance in the writings of Rousseau. My analysis makes clear that 'bodily authenticity' on the two TV shows is achieved by strictly following gender-normative codes of beauty and by a depiction of 'working hard'. But various techniques also mask the hard work, for example by showing a participant ‘having fun’ performing it.

Contemporary works of dance and fashion challenge the problematic implications in the notion of ‘bodily authenticity’. I analyse three strategies of undermining the ‘authentic’ ideal in a total of seven pieces. These strategies are hyperbole which exaggerates the beauty code implicit in ‘authentic appearance’; multiplicity which undermines ‘authenticity’s’ essentialism and estrangement which denies the notion of individual authorship. In conclusion, I place the staging strategies used in my examples in a wider cultural context and highlight potential problems inherent in their critiques.

The concept of an authentic person who makes his/her ‘true inner’ visible on the body’s surface reappears as an ideal throughout history. What has undergone significant changes, however, is what exactly constitutes authentic bodily appearance. What ‘inner’ is represented and how exactly is it made visible on the body? My article focuses on two instances in which stagings of the authentic body represent an important issue: First in the French Enlightenment and subsequently in contemporary makeover culture (which originated in the Western world, but is no longer limited to it).

Images of bodies revealing their ‘true inner’ took on particular importance in the Enlightenment when writers such as Rousseau used them as counterpoints to what they rejected as the ancien regime ’s affected bodies. One might assume today –in the aftermath of late 20th century poststructuralism, postmodernism and feminism –that any notion of bodily ‘authenticity’ or for that matter ‘essential selfhood’ would be curtly dismissed. Yet, the image of an authentic body that reveals a ‘deserving’ inner self is exactly what is staged in most popular media today.

18th century acting theories suggested that ‘naturally expressive’ gestures could be conveyed –indeed reveal feelings –without any mediation. What has changed since then, I will argue, is that the ideal authentic body in makeover-culture has to be thoroughly and visibly worked for.

For the presentation of his autumn/winter 2012 collection in Paris and subsequently in Copenhagen, Danish designer Henrik Vibskov installed a mobile catwalk. The article investigates the choreographic impact of this scenography on those who move through it. Drawing on Dance Studies, the analytical focus centres on how the catwalk scenography evokes a ‘defiguration’ of the walking models and to what effect.

Vibskov’s mobile catwalk draws attention to the walk, which is a key element of models’ performance but which usually functions in fashion shows merely to present clothes in the most advantageous manner. Stepping on the catwalk’s sloping, moving surfaces decelerates the models’ walk and makes it cautious, hesitant and shaky: suddenly the models lack exactly the affirmative, staccato, striving quality of motion, and the condescending expression that they perform on most contemporary catwalks. Vibskov’s catwalk induces what the dance scholar Gabriele Brandstetter has labelled a ‘defigurative choregoraphy’: a straying from definitions, which exist in ballet as in other movement-based genres, of how a figure should move and appear (1998). The catwalk scenography in this instance determines the models’ walk. Furthermore, letting the models set off sound through triggers with attached sound samples gives them an implied agency. This calls into question the designer’s unrestricted authorship.

On Multiple Appearances: An Analysis of the Performing Body in Kitt Johnson's Drift In the article, I challenge the prevalent use of phenomenology in dance scholarship, which focusses on the dancer's experience of her body when dancing. This approach often implies the problematic assumption that the dancer's experience is immediately transferred to the spectators who, in turn, are universally 'moved' by her dancing body. Instead of acknowledging that dance is a product of historically and culturally specific circumstances, such an analytical perspective ultimately tends to mystify dance. In this article I propose a different use of analytical tools in dance scholarship: I employ phenomenological reduction and epoche to focus on how dancing bodies appear in a stage context. To test the ability of these tools to explore dancing bodies from a third-person perspective, I analyze Danish choreographer Kitt Johnson's solo performance Drift (2011), focussing on her variable physical appearance. While phenomenology helps me to describe the multiple and radically different guises Johnson assumes in her piece, my analysis does not, ultimately, aim to distil a truer, more real being from her appearances, as is often the case in phenomenological analyses. Instead, I complement my analytical approach with the Deleuzian notion of becoming animal, suggesting that Johnson stages what, in Judith Butler's terms, could be called a critical contingency of bodily appearance.