Yesterday night, Sia performed her first full concert set since 2011. The singer is wont, as you’re probably well aware, on TV appearances, to have a celebrity do something impressive or silly or both onstage with her as she hides behind a massive, stylish mushroom or long-banged bob of hair and/or gargantuan bow. But perhaps since each TV performance of a song or two usually showcases one other artist/celebrity, the full concert came with a gaggle of them — though it seems (it’s been reported differently across the web) that most of them were only there as projections. It’s all fitting for a performance of songs largely from an album called This Is Acting — the musician’s collection of tracks initially written for other artists. So many other artists included cameos by other artists in their sets at Coachella — but few did it with the conceptual coherence of Sia.
Sia played 13 songs, including This is Acting tracks “Alive,” “Cheap Thrills,” and “Bird Set Free,” as well as 1000 Forms of Fear favorites “Chandelier” and “Elastic Heart” — not to mention Rihanna’s “Diamonds,” which Sia wrote.
The concert started with Sia performing “Alive,” which was originally written with Adele in mind. Sia sported a dress that turned out to be made of a formation of dancers. After that, Paul Dano, Tig Notaro, Maddie Ziegler (Sia’s apparent daemon) and Kristen Wiig all appeared in prerecorded projections to accompany the artist while live dancers synced with what was onscreen.
Unfortunately, the full performance has been removed from YouTube, but here are a couple of snippets, feat. Wiig and Notaro:
If you enjoyed that, you have something in common with Katy Perry:
[Via Consequence of Sound]
An earlier version of this article has been corrected to indicate that Maddie Ziegler was not performing in person.