A Strictly Stylish Valentine's

With two hours of amazing live music played by the Manor House Music quartet, including Beautiful Day(U2), Starlight (Muse), Red, Red Wine (UB40), It Must Be Love (Madness), Don't Want To Miss A Thing (Aerosmith) and You're Beautiful (James Blunt), this is going to be an amazing event.

The Chapter28 Masquerade Ball, this Feb 14th at the Assembly Hall in St Albans Town Hall, has been carefully pieced together to provide social dance enthusiasts and night-clubbers alike with a memorable experience.

The event starts at 8:00 with slow music arranged for Waltz, Foxtrot and Tango. Then at 9:00 our live musicians ramp it up a gear with an hour of fast paced chart music, which, if you know how, you can throw in a bit of quickstep, cha-cha-cha, jive or swing to.

From 10:00 a DJ will take over to create a special romantic night-club experience until midnight.

We have a selection of masks on sale at reception and just to get your boyfriend excited about coming - there will be a selection of autographed Starwars memorabilia by Dave Prowse himself. (And if we are really lucky he will be attending in person)

Our nominated charity

Action Duchenne is the nominated charity for Chapter28.

Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is a severe muscle wasting disease that affects 1 in 3600 boys for which there is presently no cure. There are 2500 people living with the disease in the UK alone.

Boys with the disease experience a gradual loss of muscle function. Most lose the ability to walk between the age of 10 and 12 and without specialist care would die in their teens.

With specialist care, the life expectancy of a person with DMD is 25 years and some are living into their 30's.

DMD can also affect cognitive function. Boys with DMD are predisposed to Autism, ADHD, Language delay and Dyslexia, which can be an added complication for families already dealing with a difficult prognosis.

In spite of this adversity, a number of DMD sufferers make it to university and have fulfilling careers thanks to support and work of their families, care workers and charities such as Action Duchenne.

The future

New genetic treatments, including Exon Skipping and Gene Replacement are being developed, which show great promise in slowing or even stopping the loss of muscle function.

The first Exon Skipping treatments should be available in 2014, but are only expected to help 13% of people with DMD. Many more could be helped, but a lot more work is needed.

Action Duchenne is running the skipDuchenne project in order to raise £5m to fund research over the next 5 years in the UK, to make sure that Exon Skipping drugs are available to everyone who could benefit from them, which is 60-80% of DMD sufferers

Halting the progress of DMD is a race against time for children with the disease, because the damage to the muscles is permanent.

Tickets are no longer available for this event