GOINGS ON SANTA BARBARA : Top Talents : American Indian dancers, opera, a writer’s workshop and an animation festival are among the activities on tap for the week.

Some of the top American Indian dancers and musicians from the United States and Canada combined talents back in 1987 to form the touring American Indian Dance Theatre.

Five years later, the company is as strong as ever and is on a tour of the West. They will be stopping at UC Santa Barbara’s Campbell Hall for performances Tuesday and Wednesday.

Members of the American Indian Dance Theatre come from a variety of tribes and nations. Since the group’s inception, most performers have been selected based on ability displayed during traditional powwows, ceremonies and dance competitions.

Tuesday’s show will begin at 8 p.m., Wednesday’s at 6 p.m. General admission is $10, $14 and $16. Call 893-3535.

Also at UCSB: The Opera Theatre group will perform Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” on Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon at the Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall on campus. The evening shows will begin at 8 and the daytime show at 2. General admission is $10. Call 893-3535. The performance will be presented again at 8 p.m. Feb. 14 and 15.

Photographer Ines Roberts will premiere a slide/music show titled “Of Islands and Sacred Places: Harmonic and Visual Synthesis” tonight at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. He will present the program again Sunday.

With his work set to music, Roberts will show images of Hawaii, the Frisian Islands in the North Sea and river caves in Arizona. General admission is $4. The museum is at 1130 State St. For information, call 963-4364.

The Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History is offering a timely program on the condor. Tonight, Jan Hamber, the museum’s condor biologist, will discuss how and why the California condor captive breeding program came to be established. Hamber was involved in the initial stages of the program. Admission is free; the presentation will begin at 7:30 p.m. The museum is at 2559 Puesta del Sol Road. For information, call 682-4711.

Writer Carolyn See will be the keynote speaker Saturday when Santa Barbara City College holds it ninth annual Writer’s Workshop.

Most of the about seven-hour program will be devoted to mini-workshops. Attendees will be able to choose from the following discussions, led by experts: screenwriting, small press publishing, “Right Brain Writing,” marketing, editing and publishing, nonfiction writing, “The Beginning Writer,” fiction and “How to Write for Kids When You’re Not One Anymore.”

The program, to be held at the Schott Center auditorium, will begin at 9:30 a.m., with the workshops wrapping up about 3:30 p.m. There will be a book signing from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. About 200 people are expected to attend, so preregistration is advised. To do so, go to the Schott Center, 310 W. Padre St., from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Friday.

It’s animation festival time again at the Victoria Street Theater in Santa Barbara. This time, it’s the “International Tournee of Animation,” which will be presented Friday through Feb. 13. Nineteen films--from the United States, Italy, Canada, Holland, Germany, the United Kingdom and the former Soviet Union--will be shown.

The program includes “Push Comes to Shove,” named best short at the Cannes Film Festival; “Photocopy Cha Cha,” first-prize winner at the USA Film Festival, and “The Life,” first-prize winner at the Hiroshima Animation Festival. Some films may not be suitable for young children.

Show times are 5:20 and 7:30 p.m. each day, with a 9:40 p.m. presentation Friday and Saturday. There also will be a 3:10 p.m. matinee Sunday. Admission is $6 (adults), $4 (senior citizens) and $3 (children), except for all 5:20 p.m. shows and Sunday’s 3:10 p.m. show, which are $4 (adults) and $3 (children). The theater is at 33 W. Victoria St. For information, call 965-1886 or 963-7868.

Going a bit farther up the coast: The Music and the Arts for Youth (MAY) organization of San Luis Obispo County will present the Ying String Quartet on Saturday night at the Old Mission in downtown San Luis Obispo.

The foursome is made of up three brothers and a sister who are in residence at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N. Y. They will perform pieces by Haydn and Schubert, and another by MAY organizer Frederic Balazs, a San Luis Obispo composer.

The concert will begin at 8 p.m. Admission is $12.50 (general) and $15 (preferred). To reserve a seat, call 541-4456.