Coachella 2016: Sia turns the festival into a stage for performance art

INDIO >> Sia’s stuing performance as the penultimate act on the Coachella stage Sunday night was either highbrow art or the vendor drugged the energy drink I pounded before the set.

Sia herself was in the shadows for most of the set, standing still on the back coer of the stage, just performing her music with some of the strongest vocals that have ever carried across the Empire Polo Club.

But before she retreated there, she appeared on the stage in a giant white dress, with her black and white wig, and a giant white bow on her head. And then the dress birthed a female Sia Mini Me during the opening song, “Alive.”

Mini Me One was Maddie Ziegler, a 13-year-old famous for her six seasons on the TV show “Dance Moms” and her dance performances in Sia’s videos for “Chandelier” “Elastic Heart” and “Big Girls Cry.”

Then there was a male Sia Mini Me for “Diamonds.”

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As they performed, I just kept thinking that Sia is The Cat in the Bow and these tremendously talented dancers were Thing 1 and Thing 2.

But then the male and female Sias kept multiplying.

Next, a man whose hair was also dyed Sia colors may have done some Tai Chi on the stage.

And Paul Dano made some kind of a customer service call between songs, in the only dialogue of the set (although there was a lot of weird heavy breathing between songs).

But Dano came back for “Bird Set Free,” in another video with a dancer throwing feathers below the screen.

As if things couldn’t get weirder, actress Kristen Wiig showed up in a Sia wig to perform via video. Wiig. Wig. My mind was being blown more by the second.

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Then there was another Sia clone wearing giant pants, not unlike the kind Rich Hall wore 30 years ago on “Saturday Night Live” when he did a send-up of David Bye and Talking Heads. And that is a reference nobody in the crowd at Coachella will get.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get weirder, that Sia clone appeared to smash its head into a pane of glass at the end of “Unstoppable.”

After Thing 1 and Thing 2 did some kind of grass skirt hula dance on steroids, they put on a panda head and a rabbit head for “Titanium.”

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You’d think there might be a giant chandelier for set closer and monster hit “Chandelier,” but that is way too literal.

Instead, Thing 1 emoted at a white table straight out of IKEA. Thing 1 was a familiar player -- Maddie Ziegler, beloved for being Sia’s dancer.

It was an hour-long music video and each Sia clone had a bow at the end of “Chandelier.”

That being said, Sia’s next time at Coachella may very well be as a headliner and she may even out-weird the only female headliner so far -- Bjork.