Why Sia is the envy of other pop stars | New York Post 

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October 26, 2016 | 11:49am | Updated October 26, 2016 | 3:26pm

Sia and Maddie Ziegler Photo: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

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It could have been Sia Furler that sang to a packed Barclays Center on Tuesday night. But it could have just as easily been any 40-year-old Australian woman, obscured by a two-tone wig and an oversized bow. No one can be entirely sure, and that is the singer’s most astonishing achievement.

In the age of overexposure, most of Sia’s set (part of an ongoing tour in support of the album “This Is Acting”) featured her standing completely still at the back the stage, singing her bombastic pop songs while a supporting cast of performers acted out Ryan Heffington’s award-winning choreography with astounding precision. It was, essentially, a 70-minute interpretative dance, on arena-sized steroids.

As with her career in general, Sia has outsourced the actual performance element by letting dancer Maddie Ziegler — the star of videos such as “Chandelier” and Elastic Heart”>“Elastic Heart” — take centerstage. The 14-year-old inhabited every part of the stage for many of the numbers — writhing, jerking and dancing with power and brio. During “One Million Bullets,” she was even accompanied by a shadow puppeteer, accompanying her movements beautifully with his fingers as they projected on the wall behind her.

To present this kind of a concept in a Brooklyn art space is one thing. But for Sia to pull this off in the mainstream arena world is nothing short of miraculous. Modern pop stars, such as Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and, until recently, Justin Bieber, are expected to overshare. They use social media to give insights into their private lives, communicate directly with followers, and invite people into their world. It gives fans the idea that they’re directly connected to their idols.

But for the past six years, Sia has made a point to do almost none of that. Her first five albums (released from 1997-2010) barely registered in the United States, but the brush with fame was enough to convince her she wanted no more of it. The breaking point was when a fan asked Sia for a photograph, just as a friend was telling her that she had cancer. It led her to seek the anonymity of writing songs for others such as Beyoncé and Rihanna.

Now, Sia has now become a star by hiding in plain sight (while Ziegler acts as her foil, keeping fans engaged). She plays the part of recluse so well, it’s now a part of Sia’s image and it’s something she still manages to maintain when in the same room as 18,000 of her fans.

One of her few crowd interactions inside Barclays Center came during “Cheap Thrills.” “Hi Brooklyn, I can see you through my bangs,” she said. The idea is, of course, that Brooklyn (or any other city on her tour) can’t look at what’s behind the bangs. Sia doesn’t want you to see her. She wants to sing her songs, leave the routines to someone else, and slip away unnoticed. It reverses the normal fan-artist power-balance, and it’s one that so many other privacy-deprived A-listers must envy.

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