Sia's 2016 Festival Season: Is She Already The MVP? - Fuse 

The “Chandelier” singer set a new standard for big-stage performances at Coachella—and she’ll keep it going through the summer

For the last two weekends at Coachella, Sia succeeded in flooring crowds — and critics, including Fuse\'s own — with a peerless vocal performance and stage presentation that throws everything we expect in a festival set for a loop. The two-weekend festival has seen its share of recent show-stopping moments, sure: The Tupac hologram, the kick-off event of Outkast’s hugely anticipated reunion tour, Daft Punk’s giant LED pyramid unveiled long before “Get Lucky” was permanently lodged in our brains—these are all events that have contributed to the FOMO complex we feel when we miss out on a major music festival and the once-in-a-lifetime experiences they cultivate. Sia gave Coachella—and will presumably give Boston Calling, Panorama and her other upcoming festival crowds—a similar experience, and she did so while keeping a guarded distance from her audience. 

This makes Sia a bit of a festival unicorn: She flips the script on the communal experience and uses the high-impact arena of a major festival to create high art and render it a medium in its own right. The festival game has a fluid set of unspoken rules, and Sia basically crumpled them up and threw ‘em away before mounting a full-scale production of her set in Indio.

This wasn’t a surprise, as the first clue came about a month ago in the form of a “performance edit” video of “Cheap Thrills” that featured the notoriously stage-shy singer performing up against a sunset-hued backdrop, three dancers sporting identical black-and-white bobbed wigs leaping across the stage as she rolled through the strongest party anthem she’s released yet. 

, has led to several excellent TV performances, just like its predecessor. She’s done

; she’s driven around L.A. with James Corden, singing the rallying “Alive, the somber “Bird Set Free” and the rambunctious, hooky-as-hell “Cheap Thrills.” 

All of these performances incorporated either Maddie Ziegler, the

alum that Sia’s collaborated with numerous times beginning with the now-iconic “Chandelier” video, or dancers carrying Maddie’s interpretive torch. Sia found a perfect visual foil to match her pensive pop and unconventional approach to staging it, and it was found in the unhinged expressions of the dancers she employs to lock eyes with her audience when she makes the active choice to avoid it. This isn’t to sleight Sia for her stage aversion or personal preferences: If anything, the fact that her live show and the televised play-out of

are so can’t-look-away compelling only shows how powerful her music and the voice have become.

When her 2016 tour dates were announced, the (as of right now) scheduled dates in the States were few and heading to festivals only, with Coachella, its eastern counterpart Panorama, Boston Calling and Colorado’s SeriesFest rounding out her American itinerary before she heads overseas for the rest of the summer. This was a bit of a head-scratcher: Sia\'s become extremely popular and has a profile befitting a main stage set, but would the theatricality of her performances work on the same scale? Would the sincerity of Maddie and the dancers convey in an environment where stunts and attention-grabbing collaborations with massive stars reign supreme? Would fans get bored with a performance that so closely incorporated elements of the late-night television sets already delivered?

The short answer to the last question is a NOPE as big as the bow she wore above her nose-brushing fringe. 

So many festivals, Coachella chief among them, rely so heavily on the element of surprise that it makes the big reveal of a celebrity cameo a constant instead of an invigorating jolt in the evening. It’s now an abnormality, a flaw on the festival’s part, if you don’t walk away from Coachella or Lollapalooza or any of these massive productions without something

to tweet about. Sia subverted both of these pillars of the festival experience in her own way: By presenting such a unique, ambitious performance in the format she did, she put on a full-scale theatrical production with a million moving parts and visual elements, but didn\'t reel in any of the showmanship and thought-provoking staging we’ve seen from her. 

At this point, Sia is certainly 2016’s antidote for a predictable, lackluster headliner on this year’s festival circuit. Gorgeous sets worthy of a Broadway billing and a veritable crew of dance geniuses are less commonplace than high-profile cameos, but hopefully Sia’s dedication to her vision will inspire her colleagues to pursue more of the same.

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Sia performs on stage at the Vodafone MTV Australia Awards 2009 in Sydney, Australia. more »

Sia performs at the Postbahnhof on April 29, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. more »

Sia performs on stage at The Roundhouse in London, England. more »

Sia performs on stage during the Big Day Out Festival at Mt Smart Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand. more »

Sia performs on stage during the Big Day Out Festival at the Sydney Showground in Sydney, Australia. more »

In place of Sia, Lena Dunham performs Sia\'s song "Chandelier" while the singer sang in a corner with her back to the audience on June 9, 2014 more »

Lloyd Bishop/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Sia visits \'The Elvis Duran Z100 Morning Show\' at Z100 Studio in New York City. more »

Sia performs during Logo TV\'s \'Trailblazers\' at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. more »

Sia and NYC Gay Men\'s Chorus pose backstage during Logo TV\'s "Trailblazers" at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. more »

Next to a mime, Sia performs on \'Saturday Night Live\' in New York City. more »

Dana Edelson/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Sia and dancer Maddie Ziegler arrive at the 57th GRAMMY Awards at Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. more »

Sia and actress Kristen Wiig perform onstage during The 57th Annual GRAMMY Awards at the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, California. more »

Sia makes an appearance during the 72nd Venice Film Festival in Venice, Italy. more »

Tyler Golden/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Sia performs with The Roots, Jimmy Fallon and Natalie Portman on \'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon\' more »

Andrew Lipovsky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

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