Spotlight: Maddie Ziegler (Little Sia)...

Madison "Maddie" Nicole Ziegler was born September 30, 2002, is an American child dancer, actress and model. She is known for appearing in Lifetime's long-running reality show Dance Moms and for starring in music videos of Sia's songs, including "Chandelier" and "Elastic Heart", which cumulatively have attracted more than 1 billion views on YouTube. Ziegler has also guest-starred on scripted shows and performed on talk shows and other broadcasts, and she has been seen on magazine covers and in feature articles.

She models for Capezio, among other brands. Ziegler was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Melissa Ziegler-Gisoni and Kurt Ziegler, who owned a mortgage company. She is of Polish, German, and Italian descent. Her parents divorced in 2011, citing the financial and emotional toll that dance took on the family. She has been an active member of the Abby Lee Dance Company since the age of two. She trains in tap, ballet, lyrical, contemporary, acro, jazz, and aerial dance^. Maddie Ziegler has a younger sister, Mackenzie (b. June 4, 2004), two older half-brothers from her father's previous marriage, and two older step-siblings from her mother's marriage to Greg Gisoni, a Vice President at Westinghouse Electric Company. Ziegler attended Sloan Elementary School until 2013, when she left to be homeschooled. Ziegler and her family live in Murrysville, Pennsylvania. Ziegler began dancing at the age of two and attends the Abby Lee Dance Company, in Pittsburgh. She has won numerous titles at regional, state and national dance competitions. In 2010, at age 8, Ziegler performed for Paula Abdul's reality television program Live to Dance but the program was canceled before her performance aired. In 2011, Ziegler's mother earned a role on Lifetime's Dance Moms, a program that documents the day-to-day lives of the young dancers on the Abby Lee Dance Company Elite Competition Team. As of 2015, Ziegler continues to appear on the show alongside her mother and younger sister, Mackenzie. In 2013, she made guest appearances on the spin-off program, Abby's Ultimate Dance Competition. In 2012, Ziegler landed her first professional acting job, portraying the character of Young Deb on the Lifetime series Drop Dead Diva^. In 2014, Ziegler appeared as a guest star in Episode 34 of HitStreak Summer, a made-for-mobile series. She continued her acting career in March 2015 with a guest spot on the Disney Channel series Austin & Ally. She appeared in June on an episode of Pretty Little Liars^. Ziegler has appeared in music videos for artists including Alexx Calise, Sia and Todrick Hall. She gained wide notice, at the age of 11, by starring in the 2014 video for Sia's song "Chandelier", which won the ARIA Music Award for Best Video and received nominations at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards for Video of the Year and Best Choreography, winning the latter. It was also nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Music Video at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. The video has received more than 700 million views on YouTube and is the 16th most viewed YouTube video of all time. In January 2015, Ziegler starred with Shia LaBeouf in "Elastic Heart", another popular Sia video. It gained some criticism for what some perceived as pedophilic undertones due to the relative ages of the dancers^. Sia explained that the two dancers represented "warring 'Sia' self states", but she nevertheless apologized on Twitter to those who may have been offended. In 2015, Ziegler starred in "Big Girls Cry", to finish her trilogy of Sia videos. After the release of "Chandelier", Ziegler danced on several television shows, including The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Dancing with the Stars, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Saturday Night Live, as well as at the Hollywood Bowl. In February 2015, she performed alongside Sia and Kristen Wiig at the 2015 Grammy Awards. Ziegler has modeled for such fashion lines as Glitzy Girl, Sally Miller, Purple Pixies and Capezio, including Capezio's Betsey Johnson line. She has also been featured in numerous magazine spreads, interviews and covers, including Kode, Schön! Magazine, Elle, Dance Spirit, Nylon, Vs., Seventeen, Harper's Bazaar, People, Dazed,Cosmopolitan,Billboard, Teen Vogue and Stella. At the 2015 New York Fashion Week, she acted as a correspondent for Elle. In 2014, Ziegler and her sister released a fashion line, The Maddie & Mackenzie Collection, through Mod Angel. Ziegler has an active social media presence, with more than 3 million Instagram followers and more than 700,000 Twitter followers. Videos of her dancing have been viewed more than 1 billion times on YouTube.