Motown in Stamford Downtown!

Everybody look cool - Smokey Robinson is coming to the CTW!

Smokey Robinson, the Grammy® Award winning member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and “King of Motown,” will be performing a one-night only benefit concert for Dana’s Angels Research Trust (DART) on Friday, May 14, 2010, at the Palace Theatre in Stamford, Conn. A Gala Cocktail Reception including celebrities will be held prior to the concert at 6:30 p.m. Tickets to the full Gala Reception and Concert start at $300 and are available by invitation only. Invitation requests can be made online at www.DanasAngels.org, by emailing tickets@danasangels.org, or by calling DART at 203-861-2063. Tickets for the general public to the concert only will be $95.00, $75.00 and $50.00 and will be available online at https://tickets.stamfordcenterforthearts.org/public/.

The Smokey Robinson DART Benefit Gala and Concert will be co-hosted by Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford, who are long-time supporters of DART and who have co-hosted previous DART benefits. Wine and hors d’oeuvres will be served at the Gala reception preceding the concert and there will be a live and silent auction with fabulous one-of-a-kind items to bid on.

Dana’s Angels Research Trust (DART) is a charity dedicated to funding medical research, education, and care for the treatment or cure of Niemann-Pick type C disease (NPC) and other similar genetic diseases. NPC is often called children’s Alzheimer’s. DART’s efforts may help millions of people (adults and children) suffering from NPC, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, stroke, and other disorders that appear to be related to the metabolism of cholesterol. Although children and some adults worldwide are afflicted, research has been extremely limited primarily because of insufficient funding, the smaller population of those affected, and a lack of public awareness. Currently, children with NPC rarely live past their early teens, and there is no cure for NPC. Today, there are limited treatment options, with experimental therapies and medications being tried with hope that there will be progress. DART was founded by the Marella family of Greenwich. Two of the Marellas' four children, Dana and Andrew, are afflicted with NPC.

To date, DART has raised close to $1.5 million toward the search for a cure for NPC. DART is particularly proud of its commitment to a unique therapy development approach for additional NPC treatments called SOAR-NPC or Support Of Accelerated Research. Working with other NPC families and organizations, SOAR has created a multidimensional collaborative drug development program searching for an effective cocktail treatment for NPC. The ambitious goal is to have at least two or three new NPC therapies ready for clinical trial in 2011. In addition, in January of this year, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel recommended the medication Zavesca to treat NPC. Phil Marella of DART, Cindy Parseghian of the Parseghian Foundation, and Barb Vorpahl of the NNPDF spoke during the public portion of the hearing. The drug's sponsor, Actelion, said the agency is expected to decide in March whether to approve Zavesca for treating NPC.