Sia Explains Why Her Videos Aren't 'Sexy'
She once changed "curvy hip movements" to "gorilla dancing and belly patting."
— -- Sia's videos and live performances always feature elaborately choreographed dance routines, but it's never the singer herself who's doing the dancing.
Why not? The artist, who released the album "1,000 Forms of Fear," admitted in an interview with the New York Times that she's just too scared to try.
Sia told the newspaper that she was "expelled from ballet at age five for disrupting the class," and while she does have a love of dancing, she insists it's not for her -- at least when it comes to actual choreographed routines.
"I have always been the first on the dance floor, but I’m not teachable. I couldn’t learn ‘five, six, seven, eight’ if my life depended on it," she said. "[My choreographer] keeps trying to convince me to do a video myself, and I find that so flattering, but I’m too afraid or lazy.”
That's why Sia has relied on dancers who stand in for her, such as Maddie Ziegler, the young star of the her "Chandelier," "Elastic Heart" and "Big Girls Cry" videos. But Sia insisted that the most important thing for her was that Ziegler never appear sexualized in any of those clips.
"I couldn’t think of anything I’d want less than just another video for little girls and boys to watch that tells them: ‘Look pretty! Be sexy!’" she said. "I want my work to say: ‘Get weird! Express yourself freely!’”
“The first time I came to see what [choreographer] Ryan [Heffington] had choreographed [for the 'Chandelier' video], I remember asking for a few curvy hip movements to be changed to gorilla dancing and belly patting. I remember saying ‘flexed foot over pointed foot,’ and let’s make it weirder — and throwing some ideas around about facial pulling and eating some pretend ramen," she added.
Ziegler and several other dancers are joining Sia for her upcoming festival performances, which get underway this weekend at New York's Panorama festival. Fans can get a preview on Friday, when Sia will perform live from New York's Central Park as part of ABC's "Good Morning America" summer concert series.