Meet Bonita Borne Singer.

Q: Tell us a little bit about what you’ve done over your lifetime?

A: I grew up in Los Angeles. My father was in show business in the golden age of Hollywood and was the pianist for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I would always hear him playing the piano. I was surrounded by music and dance. Later, he was with Tony Martin and Cyd Charisse for 23 years as their musical director. It was my aunt Cyd, who got my sister and me into a ballet studio and we absolutely loved it.

From there we ended up at The School of American Ballet when I was sixteen. I got into the New York City Ballet at age seventeen. My sister came two years later. She did the same thing. She spent one year at the school and then, boom, she was in the New York City Ballet and we were working girls. We traveled all over the world with the company. We danced for George Balanchine, who is the master of American dance of the 20th century as well as Jerome Robbins, who choreographed Fiddler on the Roof.

Q: How long did you do that?

A: I danced for eleven years with the company. Then I’d danced in Zurich for a year, which was New York City Ballet’s European company. We went with a bunch of my friends. We all wanted to live in Europe. It was very exciting. It was wonderful.

Then it was time to make a transition.  I started teaching and staging some of the Balanchine ballets and I really enjoyed it. In 1985 Helgi Tomasson, one of the principal dancers for the New York City Ballet became the new director for The San Francisco Ballet he asked me to join him as the Ballet Mistress and assistant to the artistic director, I did that for over 11 years. That’s where I met my husband, Neil, in San Francisco.
We adopted our two boys in San Francisco. It became difficult to do my full-time job, which entailed nights and weekend performances.

Q: How did you find Sedona?

A: We were living in Mill Valley, which is on the North side of the Golden Gate Bridge, lot’s of traffic and with us both working our life was out of control. One day, across Neil’s desk came this paper from Sedona Medical Center looking for a medical director and we were not sure where Sedona was so we looked it up. Neil’s family was moving from the Boston area to Phoenix and we thought Sedona is only two hours away from Sedona, that works for us.  Neil was interviewed and he got the job and I quit my job. We packed up our house and he sold his practice. The next thing we knew, we were here with a six-month-old and a two-year-old. That’s how we ended up here. People thought we were crazy twenty-six years ago giving up everything, but we know we did the right thing. We love it here.

Q: Why do you love Sedona?

A: I didn’t love it in the beginning because I’m a city girl, but Neil’s made such a contribution to this community. He’s such a good doctor. He’s very smart and I think the community’s been very lucky to have him. It was great for my boys to grow up in this environment and not in a big city. We felt safe here.

Q: Who’s the most interesting person you’ve met while living in Sedona?

A: Neil meets some amazing people that we would never even know lived here. There are quite a few. I have to say the friends that we’ve made with the kids growing up have been some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met and their lifelong friends now. I think a couple of Neil’s patients, one was a general in the army, he was amazing. The photos on his walls were of Saddam Husain’s palace.

Q: What are a couple of your favorite restaurants in our community\town?

A: It’s Shorebird this week because we’re going there in two weeks. I was a dancer for 25 years and never ate much. When we moved here, I got into cooking. We used to have a little gourmet group and we did a lot of cooking with all my friends, we would alternate homes. We go out, but not as much in the past couple years.

Q: Who’s the one person dead or alive you’d love to have lunch with?

A: I’d like to see Mr. George Balanchine again. He was a brilliant choreographer, teacher, and father figure, having gone through the experiences I have gone through over the years. He was the director of the New York City Ballet, and choreographer. I would just love to sit down and pick his brain at this point. I was too shy to ever do that in my youth, but now I’m not so shy.

Q: What advice would you give to a group of people just looking to you, for something to hold onto?

A: I’ve done that by teaching. When I was with the San Francisco Ballet as Ballet Mistress, I taught the ladies point-work-point class. I counseled them in their social life. I counseled them in their professional life. I was like a Jewish mama for all my dancers, because I always felt like the New York City Ballet was family. I wanted to impart that to my dancers in San Francisco because they were very young. You need somebody to help guide you. You must be true to yourself.  What’s inside you Shines through you, it comes out on the stage, you can’t hide that. Also Teaching my boys to be gentlemen, to respect the ladies.

Q: How would one of your closest friends describe you?

A: My closest friends are people that I met the first day we moved to Sedona. I think they would say I’m an innovator because we’ve done a lot of fundraising for the schools over the last seventeen years.   We did this together, all of us and they followed the lead that’s for sure.

Q: What’s your favorite wine?

A: I’d say Silver Oak Cabernet is really delicious so that’s probably one of my favorites and Far Niente Chardonnay.

Q: What three words come to mind when you think of the word “home”?

A: My husband and my two boys.