All of this year’s award winners will travel to New York City as guests of the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, where they will receive their awards at a black-tie gala, held in the presence of HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, on Oct. 15, 2008, at Cipriani 42^nd Street.

Ben Gunderson, from Moorhead, Minn., is a rising college senior studying acting in the School of Drama. He received the Robert and Gloria Houseman Theater Award*  in the form of an acting scholarship to UNCSA. Gunderson was born in Fargo, N.D., and raised just across the border in Moorhead, where he started on stage in the sixth grade. He reached his greatest audience to date playing the role of Riff in a dozen sold-out performances of UNCSA’s all-School production of West Side Story, and most recently had the lead in the enormously successful musical Take One Step, which broke attendance records at the UNCSA Summer Performance Festival at Roanoke Island Festival Park in Manteo. His other UNCSA roles and shows include Solange in The Maids, Dopey in Balm in Gilead, Comedy of Errors, Henry IV, and Dead Man Walking. Gunderson was the 2005 recipient of a National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts Award and a Donna Reed Foundation Scholarship in musical theater. He was chosen to speak at the first annual Actors Congress in 2006. 

Blaine Hoven, of Mobile, Ala., is a member of the corps de ballet of American Ballet Theatre (ABT). He received the Chris Hellman Dance Award** in the form of a ballet fellowship to American Ballet Theatre. Born in Mobile, Hoven began his training at Mobile Ballet under the direction of Winthrop Corey and Ann Duke. During his high school years, he trained at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts with Melissa Hayden, Warren Conover, Fanchon Cordell, Nina Danilova, and Susan McCullough. Hoven received ABT’s National Training Scholarship from 1999 to 2002 and attended ABT’s Summer Intensive for five summers. He joined ABT’s Studio Company in September 2003 and the main company in April 2004. His repertoire with the company includes the Standard Bearer in The Green Table, Cassio in Othello, the Bluebird, the Russian Prince and a Fairy Knight in The Sleeping Beauty, the Neapolitan Dance in Swan Lake, and leading roles in Baker’s Dozen, C. to C. (Close to Chuck), Clear, and In the Upper Room. He created leading roles in Glow – Stop and Pretty Good Year, and a featured role in From Here On Out.

Princess Grace Foundation/Awards

Each year, the Princess Grace Foundation-USA announces a select group of Princess Grace Awards for distinction in the areas of theater, dance, and film. Students are eligible for scholarships; emerging artists working in companies qualify for apprenticeships and fellowships. A playwriting fellowship is available for individual artists through a residency at New Dramatists in New York City. In addition to these, the foundation also gives honorable mention grants to applicants through honoraria. 

The 2008 Princess Grace Awards winners represent various colleges, universities, and not-for-profit theater and dance companies throughout the United States. This year’s winners hail from 16 states and represent 12 organizations that are new to partnering with the foundation. The award winners exemplify both classical and alternative artistic disciplines and, while still considered emerging talent, they are already distinguished in their areas of expertise.

The Princess Grace Foundation has nurtured an amazingly varied group of more than 500 artists who have gone on to feed the entire spectrum of performing arts with innovative, cutting-edge, vibrant theater, dance, film, playwriting and design.  Among some notable Princess Grace Awards recipients in Theater are 2008 Tony Award-winner for Best Direction of a Play, Anna D. Shapiro; Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning playwright Tony Kushner, and Academy Award-winner Eric Simonson. Film recipients include Stephen Hillenburg, creator of SpongeBob SquarePants; Eric Darnell, director of MADAGASCAR 1 and 2 and ANTZ, and Greg Mottola, director of SUPERBAD. Recipients of Princess Grace Dance Awards include choreographers Robert Battle and Dawn Stoppiello and ballet dancers Maria Kowroski and Ethan Stiefel. Stiefel, who is a principal dancer with American Ballet Theatre, is the new dean of the School of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

* Robert and Gloria Hausman Theater Award

This award, endowed by founding Chairman Robert J. Hausman and his wife, Gloria, represents the panel’s high regard for the awardee's work and dedication to theater. Prince Rainier III of Monaco chose Mr. Hausman to start the Foundation in 1982; his commitment to the Foundation helped shape it into the nationally recognized organization it is today.  Before he died in 1997, Mr. Hausman and his wife endowed this award to recognize an outstanding theater artist each year. This special honor is awarded to only one theater recipient each year.

**Chris Hellman Dance Award

This award, endowed by Prima Ballerina Chris Hellman and her husband, F. Warren Hellman, represents the panel’s high regard for the awardee's work and dedication to dance. Chris Hellman, Trustee Emeritus of the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, has enjoyed a renowned career as a dancer and dance professional. This special honor is awarded to only one dancer each year.

For more information about the Princess Grace Awards and the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, visit www.pgfusa.org.

University of North Carolina School of the Arts

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts is the first state-supported, residential school of its kind in the nation. Established as the North Carolina School of the Arts by the N.C. General Assembly in 1963, UNCSA opened in Winston-Salem (“The City of the Arts”) in 1965 and became part of the University of North Carolina system in 1972. More than 1,100 students from middle school through graduate school train for careers in the arts in five professional schools: Dance, Design and Production (including a Visual Arts Program), Drama, Filmmaking, and Music. UNCSA is the state’s only public arts conservatory, dedicated entirely to the professional training of talented students in the performing, visual and moving image arts. For more information, visit www.ncarts.edu.

Including the new winners, a total of 20 University of North Carolina School of the Arts students and alumni have won a total of 24 Princess Grace Awards since the foundation began awarding them nearly 25 years ago.