August 1, 1986

Friday SALSA IN BROOKLYN The Prospect Park Bandshell will ring with the sounds of jazz and salsa this weekend when Celebrate Brooklyn presents a festival of Latin music. Tonight at 8, a double bill will feature Daniel Ponce and Bobby Sanabria and Acension (rain date: tomorrow at 3). Tomorrow night at 8, Tito Puente, a winner of three Grammy awards, will appear with his Latin Jazz Ensemble; the Roland Vasquez Band, with Nicky Marrero on timbales, will also perform (rain date: Sunday at 3). Finally, on Sunday night at 8, La Gran Manzana and Louie Ramirez and Ray de la Paz will conclude the festival (rain date: Monday night at 8). Admission for all concerts is free, but a $1 contribution is suggested. The bandshell is near the corner of Prospect Park West and Ninth Street. Information: (718) 768-0699.

With the dollar falling to the lowest level against the Japanese yen since the late 1940's, gold bullion prices soared to a two-year high in active trading yesterday. At the close of New York's Commodity Exchange, the world's biggest gold futures market, bullion for delivery in August jumped $10.70 an ounce, to $362.70, the highest level since July 3, 1984. The dollar's decline was touched off by remarks made Wednesday night by Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who suggested that the currency was overvalued. With the dollar so weak, investors sought greater stability in gold.

House conferees completed work tonight on their opening bargaining position on tax revision legislation and agreed to place some limits on deductions for contributions to Individual Retirement Accounts. The plan's details were not made public, but some of the elements were disclosed by the lawmakers. Some Republican Senators who are conferees raised strong objections before the House conferees' document was even completed. One representative said the conferees decided to limit deductions for money placed in I.R.A.'s to taxpayers with incomes below a certain level. He declined to be more specific. Representative Richard A. Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, said the package would increase business taxes by $142 billion over the next five years, about $30 billion more than the Senate has proposed.

IT was a hot afternoon and people slouched on the benches inside the Central Park Bandshell, sitting out the threat of a summer storm. Suddenly a small, agile woman appeared at the front of the stage and began to swing a fluorescent, whirring tube, kicking her booted foot high, green skirts flying, as cameras snapped away. Danitra Vance, the comedian, had arrived for a photo session, and she had an instant audience and an exuberant new character to play. On Sunday afternoon at 4, Ms. Vance and the Alien Comic, also known as Tom Murrin, will open Creative Time's lively and ambitious, free, six-week ''Dance and Performance'' series at the bandshell, presented under auspices of the Central Park SummerStage program. But earlier this week, onstage in the park, life and art had merged in those few moments of spontaneous theater. And that, in a sense, is what ''Dance and Performance'' is all about. ''For the last 13 years we've been putting artists in public spaces,'' Anita Contini, director of Creative Time, said. ''Now we're bringing them to a public place.'' The organization is a nonprofit arts group founded in 1973 to assist visual and performing artists in the realization of work created for public presentation in New York City. Until now, however, the presentations have tended to be in special environments like the anchorage of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Battery Park City landfill.

The Air Force said today that it was planning a large new fleet of unmanned rockets and would close its new shuttle-launching facility on the West Coast at least until 1992. The $2.8 billion shuttle facility at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has never been used. The Air Force also said its new rocket program would encourage developing a vast new commercial space-launching industry. Under the plan, payloads that are critical to national security will be carried by unmanned rockets launched from the East Coast or by rockets from Vandenberg. Military experts had hoped to launch some satellites from West Coast shuttles because their orbits would have let them survey a greater portion of the earth.