Every Body Deserves the Stage
04/09/2026
“Should a hypermobile person even want to become a singer?” This is the question I was not prepared to be asked when I led my workshop Teaching Hypermobile Singers: Turning Frustration into Fascination at EuroVox 2026.
I have led this presentation many times, and I will keep leading it. The reason is simple:
I want voice teachers to recognise these singers, understand their challenges and their talents, and know how to help them thrive.
This is not a new position for me. When I opened my studio in 2007, I built it on one line, and it has been the baseline of everything I have done since: “Because your voice deserves to be heard!”
Not just the voices that already fit a mould. Voices. All of them. That belief is nearly two decades old, and it is exactly why a conclusion like the one I heard at EuroVox… baffled me.
I was prepared to meet open-minded teachers who wanted to help the singers in front of them. I was not prepared for what two of them said.
By the way, don’t just trust my report of what has happened. The whole workshop has been recorded and is now part of The singsing! Sofa Library, as well as 50+ other webinars covering everything from the extreme vocal effects to breath management, storytelling to stage fright, voice care to riffs!
Over 70 hours of content at the time of publication, with new sessions added every month.
Should a Hypermobile Person Even Want to Become a Singer?
During the session, a teacher in the audience asked what kind of hypermobile singers I work with. I answered: all genres, all levels, up to elite touring professionals. He was thinking of a student of his who has significant difficulty with proprioception and interoception, and he put it plainly:
“It’s maybe not a good idea to want to become a singer.”
I did not agree. Billie Eilish is a hypermobile singer with a beautiful career. It has even been theorised that Maria Callas was hypermobile, though we cannot know that for certain.
I talked about accommodations that are genuinely easy to make. For many hypermobile singers, the professional path is absolutely possible when we adjust rehearsal schedules, offer accommodations, and empower the singer to advocate for themselves (scroll down for a long list of thriving elite artists and athletes with hypermobility and other health challenges).
Then a second teacher spoke. She began generously. “I’m very happy to hear all these things, because it’s new to me to work with hypermobile students.” She told me she now realised she had probably been teaching hypermobile students for years without knowing it. This is exactly why I do these workshops. And then she supported the first teacher. Her reasoning? Time.
“A student has only so many lessons, 25 designated singing lessons during a year, and so much of that time goes to pain, fatigue, and all the other things, so that there’s not enough time to work, actually, on the vocal technique and the music. Maybe some of them should consider not to become singers. I’m very sorry to say it in a forum like this, but there is also a practical issue of time.”
Both of these teachers work in professional degree programmes, in conservatoires or universities. They recognised the challenges I described in real students of theirs. And the conclusion they reached, out loud, was that those students might not be suited to a professional career. Did I just give them ammunition to take away these singers’ dreams and make them leave the institution?
Luckily, there were many voices in the room. Other teachers pushed straight back, and they modelled the exact approach I teach. One described a former student of hers who is hypermobile, who had physiotherapy from a young age, and who has just completed a young-artist programme at the Royal Opera House. Her point was direct:
People can be hypermobile and do very well!
Another said that teachers can work creatively within the parameters they are given. Split the hour into two half-hour lessons, one for technique and one for repertoire. Suggest that a student takes a little longer before the next stage. That doesn’t count you out from a career, and there are so many different paths, and showing a student those paths is part of our job.
So two responses in the same room at the same time. One asked whether these singers belong in the profession at all. The other asked how to make room for them. I keep thinking about the first one.
The Long History of Elitism and Ableism in Music Education
I cannot read anyone’s mind, and I will not pretend to. I do not know these teachers’ intentions. What I can do is ask questions, and place those questions next to the long history of elitism and ableism in music education.
When a teacher hears a full account of a student’s challenges and concludes that the student should reconsider the profession, what exactly is being measured? The student’s potential, or the institution’s willingness to change? Is the barrier the singer’s body, or a curriculum built around one kind of body and a fixed number of lesson hours?
Whose limitation is it when 25 lessons a year are “not enough”? The student’s, or a system that decided in advance how much time a “normal” student is allowed to need? When we conclude that a hypermobile student might not make it, are we protecting the student from disappointment, or protecting the institution from having to adapt? And how much of what we call talent is really compliance with a template that was never designed for every body?
These are not rhetorical traps. They are the questions I think we owe our students. And they have history behind them, because gatekeeping in conservatoires is not a hypothetical.
Thomas Quasthoff is one of the great bass-baritones of the last half century, a three-time Grammy winner who sang with the world’s leading orchestras. He was born with severe disabilities linked to thalidomide. When he applied to the music conservatoire in Hannover, he was refused, not for lack of ability to sing, but because he could not play the piano, and playing piano was treated as an unbreakable entry requirement. He studied voice privately instead, then won the ARD International Music Competition and built a career that the institution had told him he could not have. The requirement was not about music. It was about a body that fit the mould.
When I hear a teacher conclude that a hypermobile student should think twice, I do not know their heart. I do know that history is full of institutions that mistook their own inflexibility for a candidate’s lack of potential.
Run the same logic in another direction and listen to how it sounds. The music industry was historically built around men, in its rooms, its leadership, its assumptions about who a serious musician is and in who it accommodates. So yes, it is still much harder for a woman to make it in the music industry than for a man. Does that mean that women should therefore simply not try? Of course not. We immediately recognise that reasoning for what it is: a description of who was kept out, not of who is capable. And a call for change.
So when the argument is that the training was not built for a hypermobile body, the honest question is exactly the same: Is that a fact about the singer, or a fact about who the system was built for?
And if a system was built too narrowly, whose job is it to widen it: the eighteen-year-old at the audition, or the institution?
Everyone Has Challenges. Accommodation Is the Job.
Here is the thing I will not let go of: No human is perfect, and there is no human without challenges.
Non-hypermobile people have different challenges, not fewer. Conservatoires, universities, and degree programmes exist to educate a range of human beings, which means accommodating where they can. And accommodation is often easy. Letting a singer with POTS sit down is not a burden, it is a chair. A lesson split into technique and repertoire. A longer timeline before the next stage. A referral to a physiotherapist who actually understands hypermobility. None of that lowers a standard. It removes an obstacle that had nothing to do with the standard in the first place.
Accommodation happens all the time. This summer, EuroVox accommodated me, and I am very grateful. Medical issues meant I could not travel to Switzerland to give this workshop in person, the way it had been planned. So I offered a plan B, to deliver it online instead, and the organisers said yes at once. There was no friction, and no suggestion that I should simply sit this one out. They were actually very enthusiastic about all of it and went totally out of their way to make it happen.
I felt very welcome. One adjustment, and the talk went ahead. That is the whole argument in miniature. The same conference that made room for a presenter who could not be in the room is the conference where two teachers wondered aloud whether a singer with a challenging body belongs in the profession at all.
Making room is never the hard part. Being willing to look at yourself, see what is lacking and choose differently is.
Performers with Medical Challenges Who Built Professional Careers
If difficulty disqualified people from the stage, most of these careers would never have existed. Would you tell any of them they did not deserve one?
- Nick Jonas was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at thirteen, just as his career was beginning, and has said he worried it would stop him before he started. It did not. He manages it and performs at the top of the industry.
- Selena Gomez was diagnosed with lupus and underwent a kidney transplant in 2017 after lupus damaged her kidneys, with a friend donating the organ. She has continued to release music and perform.
- Toni Braxton was diagnosed with lupus in 2008 and has kept recording and touring through serious complications. She has said her management told her to hide the diagnosis, that she could not get insured, and that at first she could not get work, because people were afraid she might collapse on stage. The barrier there was not her voice. It was fear.
- Lady Gaga has spoken about living with fibromyalgia and chronic pain, and has postponed shows when the pain was severe. She is one of the most successful performers of her generation.
- Andrea Bocelli has been completely blind since the age of twelve, after congenital glaucoma and a football accident. He went on to become one of the best-selling classical artists of all time. In February 2026 he sang ‘Nessun Dorma’ at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan.
- Thomas Quasthoff, as above, was refused entry to a conservatoire because his disability meant he could not play the piano, and became a three-time Grammy winner and one of the finest lieder and concert singers in the world.
Every one of these artists has a professional career and a body that a gatekeeper could have used as a reason to say no.
Hypermobile Singers at the Top of Their Field 🦓
Hypermobility is not a barrier to a professional voice. It is already standing on the biggest stages.
- Sia disclosed in 2019 that she lives with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, alongside chronic pain. She is one of the most recognisable singer-songwriters in the world.
- Halsey shared in 2022 that, after years of searching for answers and being dismissed, she was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, POTS, and mast cell activation syndrome, among other conditions. She rehearsed and toured while managing all of it.
- Shakira is hypermobile, says her own trainer, who has explained that Shakira’s “flexibility” is because of her joints (laxity) rather than her muscles and that they train specifically to keep those joints protected. She has not disclosed an EDS diagnosis. With informed support, her body is the engine of one of the most physical careers in pop.
- Billie Eilish has the soft, breathy, flexible vocal quality I point to in the talk as characteristic of a hypermobile voice. She is a multiple Grammy winner, and she has also spoken openly about living with Tourette syndrome.
- Maria Callas has been theorised to be hypermobile. We do not know this for certain, but I like the idea that her hypermobility may have pushed her to find creative solutions to her challenges, and that that has driven her career. Though I offer it as a thought and not a fact.
And oh! Here are a few spot-on quotes from Robin Hahn, operatic lyric soprano and disability advocate with hEDS:
- “Disabled artists are already here in the performing arts sector. We have always been here – we already belong. (…) It’s time the classical music sector realized we’re here. It’s time to embrace the reality of disabled artistry, and the value inherent in disabled audience members seeing ourselves represented onstage.”
- “Some ask why I advocate for disabled artists in opera, because ‘there aren’t a lot of you anyway’. ‘There aren’t a lot of us’ because we either 1) leave the industry due to inaccessibility or 2) pretend we’re not disabled for fear of losing work.”
Hypermobile Athletes at the Elite Level 🦓
The same body that a conservatoire might treat as fragile is, in other arenas, treated as an advantage.
Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time, has hypermobile ankles that bend around fifteen percent more than his rivals’, and he is hypermobile through the chest as well. That “flexibility” – or rather laxity – is repeatedly named as part of why he moves through water the way he does.
Beyond any single name, the research is consistent:
Studies have found a high prevalence of joint hypermobility among dancers and gymnasts, and it gives them a genuine competitive advantage in ballet, gymnastics, figure skating, dance, and overhead sports.
The Ehlers-Danlos Society describes hypermobility as literally giving dancers, gymnasts, acrobats, and skaters a leg up on their competition.
The same goes for singers, though I don’t like talking about ‘competition’ when it comes to artists. That is a whole other conversation. 😉 Here are the possible talents I describe in my blog post Hypermobile Singers: From Pretty Impressive to Pretty Painful (read the whole post for the complete picture).
- An extended vocal range
- An unusually flexible voice
- The ease to sing softly and breathily, which enables a distinct intimate sound
- Great stylistic versatility due to the ease of changing vocal qualities
And here is the honest other half, because it is the whole point: Hypermobile athletes are also more prone to injury, take longer to heal, and need dedicated stability, strength, and body-awareness work to stay well. In other words, they need exactly what I am asking voice teachers to provide: informed support, not a closed door. Elite sport did not solve this by telling hypermobile people they should not compete. It solved it with better coaching.
Because Your Voice Deserves to Be Heard!
Our job as voice teachers is still to empower the singer to advocate for themselves. And the responsibility does not sit with the singer alone. Institutions are meant to accommodate, and accommodation is usually easier than the fear that surrounds it.
I do not bring a story of doom. I bring a realistic picture and a way forward: This is the kind of system I am working with, this is how I can help this voice thrive, these are the challenges, and this is how I empower this person to look after themselves. Everybody deserves the chance to find out how far their voice can go. A teacher’s role is to open doors, not to decide in advance which bodies are allowed through them.
If you teach, and you have looked at a hypermobile singer and wondered whether the profession is really for them, I would gently turn the question around. The question is not whether they are built for the institution. The question is whether the institution is willing to be built for them.
Because your voice deserves to be heard!
I meant it when I opened my studio in 2007, and I mean it now. Every body. Every voice.
I mentor voice teachers to help singers thrive. If this blog post made you curious to work with me, book your free Discovery Call!
I’d love to support you in your journey to empower all the singers you’re working with – hypermobile or not.
Jess Blatchley, Singing Teacher and Jazz Singer
Dr. Tracy Smith Bessette - Singer, Voice Instructor, Early Music Coach & Course Lecturer
Jess Blatchley, Singing Teacher and Jazz Singer
I leave our lessons feeling inspired and with new tools to use with my voice students. I particularly love that I now have language to identify and describe with more specificity the different kinds of sounds that live in pop/rock styles. Working with Sarah has made me a better teacher for my students!
M.J. Johnson, Singing Teacher and Vocal Coach
Frequently Asked Questions About Hypermobile Singers
Can hypermobile singers have a professional singing career?
Yes. Hypermobility is not a barrier to a professional voice. With informed teaching, attention to safety and stability, and a few reasonable accommodations, hypermobile singers work at every level, from beginners to elite touring professionals. Sia and Halsey have both spoken publicly about performing while living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
What is hypermobility, and how does it affect the voice?
Hypermobility means the joints move beyond the usual range. The connective tissue of people with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (HSD) and hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS) is more stretchy and less able to hold everything firmly in place. For singers it can affect breath management, posture, stamina, proprioception (the sense of where the body is in space) and much more. Because vocal technique is built on stability, that stability sometimes has to be trained more deliberately. It also often brings real talents, such as an easy range and a flexible, expressive voice, and it presents differently in every singer. Read my blog post Hypermobile Singers: From Pretty Impressive to Pretty Painful for more.
How can voice teachers help hypermobile singers?
The best help is what good teachers already do. Ask instead of assume, put safety and stability before pushing technique, build in pacing and recovery, and offer simple accommodations such as sitting for a singer with POTS or splitting a lesson into technique and repertoire. You do not have to become a different kind of teacher, you have to stay curious and adapt to the singer in front of you, and refer on to informed health care professionals when it is needed.
Are there famous hypermobile singers?
Yes. Billie Eilish, Sia and Halsey have disclosed hypermobility and / or Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and Shakira’s trainer has described her as hypermobile. Beyond singing, hypermobility is common – and often an advantage – among elite dancers, gymnasts, and swimmers, which says a great deal about what these bodies can do with the right support.
As always, feel free to send me your thoughts, questions, and feedback in the comments below this blog, via the contact form or in the singsing! online community 
Warm regards,
Sarah
Sarah Algoet is a singer, voice teacher and vocal coach, and the founder of singsing!, which she started in 2007 on one belief: your voice deserves to be heard. She works with singers across every genre and level, from beginners to elite touring professionals, and specialises in teaching hypermobile singers, an area she also knows from the inside as a hypermobile singer herself. Alongside teaching, she mentors other voice teachers and coaches, researches the voice, and presents her work internationally. Her teaching brings voice training together with psychologically informed coaching, including Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT), Compassion Focused Training (CFT) and Internal Family Systems (IFS), under the idea of healing through the voice. You can also learn with her in The singsing! Sofa Library, her online library of voice-training webinars and courses.