DANCE CRITICS TAKE IN LINCOLN CENTER SIGHTS.

The Dance Critics Association returns to New York City for its annual conference scheduled to coincide with the international Lincoln Center Festival on July 20-22. Titled "Write On! Links to the Past, Visions of the Future," the conference features a keynote address by Dance Magazine columnist and senior consulting editor Clive Barnes and takes place at the studios of the School. of American Ballet. More than 400 critics, writers, historians, and scholars are expected to attend.

The panels include a discussion of the links between hip-hop, MTV, and concert dance with PureMovement director-choreographer Rennie Harris, choreographer Elizabeth Streb, and hoofer Grover Dale, and a look at Latino dance influences with Laura Alonzo, Gloria Contreras, Merian Soto, and Jose Bustamente. Deborah Jowitt, senior dance critic of the Village Voice, will moderate a discussion of the legal ramifications of the Martha Graham Company lineage. Dance Magazine's New York editor, Wendy Perron, will moderate a dialogue with festival director Nigel Redden and choreographer Trisha Brown, whose company is featured in the festival. Richard Philp, Dance Magazine's executive editor, will lead a wrap-up session. According to Karyn D. Collins, chair person of the conference's organizing committee, the DCA is "trying to reflect the multiculturalism of dance." Aligning the conference with the Lincoln Center Festival, she said, makes the weekend "very interesting for members coming from out of town and allows them to see things that are happening in the city." Collins added that the conference promises to "offer something for different communities, so everyone can come away with something."

Highlights of the festival include La Scala Ballet's new production of Giselle, staged by and starring Sylvie Guillem. La Scala also brings Roland Petit's Carmen, with Alessandra Ferri in the lead, and a ballet based on the Fellini film Amarcord staged by Luciano Cannito. Madrid's Compania Nacional de Danza, under the direction of Nacho Duato, will appear in Multiplicity: Forms of Silence and Emptiness. Salvatore Sciarrino's opera Luci Mie Traditrici is being staged and choreographed by Trisha Brown, whose collaboration with jazz trumpeter and composer Dave Douglas, El Trilogy, also will be performed in its entirety.

The deadline for early registration ($60 seniors/students; $80 members; $100 nonmembers) is June 15. After June 15, fees increase by $20. Single-day registration for all participants is $75 per day. For more information on the DCA conference, call Bill Bissell, conference coordinator, at 215/732-9060.

For the Lincoln Center performance schedule, visit www.lincolncenter.org or call the Lincoln Center Festival hotline at 212/875-5928. Tickets go on sale in mid-June at the Avery Fisher box office or by phone via CenterCharge at 212/721-6500.