FOR Paul Joseph Mercurio, life is a runaway roller-coaster lived on several tracks - the tyres of his lethal 250kmh Suzuki GSXR 1100 motorcycle; a Pacific Ocean wave; the artistic and financial precipice he has created by leaving the Sydney Dance Company after a decade to establish his own contemporary dance ensemble.

This multi-talented, career-driven, beer-brewing, surfing son of actor gravelly Gus, is also Australia's hottest new film star - perhaps another Mel Gibson-to-be.

At this year's Cannes Film Festival he had stardom and adulation unexpectedly thrust upon him, sitting on the beach from 8.30am to 6.30pm doing sequential 20-minute interviews with a procession of international journalists desperate to know all about the unheralded star of Strictly Ballroom, the festival's unlikeliest hit.

Back home in Sydney after the non-stop whirl of Cannes, the phone rang and Harry M. Miller was asking him to choreograph Jesus Christ Superstar: The Concert, the megamillion-dollar phenomenon coming to Melbourne in mid-August after its Sydney premiere 10 days earlier. It wasn't the best moment to have to make a decision of such magnitude; Mercurio, already wearing his choreographer's hat, was rehearsing Edgeing, a work inspired by his passion for roller-blading and starring himself, for SDC's June season.

Did he say yes? He did.

Incredibly, Paul Mercurio also finds time away from his frenetic work schedule to play the most satisfying roles of all . . . husband to former Australian Ballet dancer Andrea Toy, father of Elise Amy, nearly three, and Emily, who will be one in November.

"Life is busy, and a lot of fun," Mercurio, 29, said from Sydney a couple of days ago.

"But it's wonderful. I feel as if I'm standing in a doorway at the moment, looking out to a future with incredible potential and possibilities. One just hopes that it keeps going - forward!" Given the uncertainty of Australia's film industry, and the even more precarious future his new-born Australian Choreographic Ensemble (ACE, get the drift?) faces, Mercurio can only hope for continued forward momentum. ACE, he concedes, represents a brave (some might reasonably say, brazen) initiative at a time when Australia's recession threatens to become even worse before the economy claws back to something remotely resembling the 1980s boom.

"I suppose my main inspiration is that I know there is a need for a company like ACE," Mercurio commented. "It's an area that's totally untapped, and I know there are people out there who will support us. "The vast majority of people in Sydney's western suburbs never go to contemporary dance, and I would love to base ourselves in Melbourne for a couple of months every year for city and suburban seasons.

"It's really going to the people and building up a future audience for dance - tapping those people who aren't being tapped." Tap (along with jazz and modern) was one of Swan Hill-born Paul Mercurio's early dance loves, but his intentions became serious when he did two years' study as a scholarship student at the West Australian Ballet from 1979, followed by a year at the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne. The following year, artistic director Graeme Murphy, sensing the swarthy Mercurio's potential as a contemporary dancer, offered him a contract with Sydney Dance Company. It takes a dancer a split-second to execute the most spectacular jete on the ballet stage; that's how long Mercurio recalls it took him to decide to follow Murphy north to Sydney.

Under Murphy's tutelage, Mercurio has toured to the United States, Italy, Greece, Singapore, Spain, Portugal, Britain, China, Kongkong, Japan, Holland and New Zealand, and become a prolific and respected choreographer.

He left the company in June to concentrate on establishing ACE, collaborate with director Richard Wherrett on the choreography for Jesus Christ Superstar, and accommodate the inevitable round of interviews ahead of the anticipated August 20 blockbuster Australian release of Strictly Ballroom.

The film, Mercurio's first, has already given him a public profile other more experienced actors surely envy, but he isn't complaining - especially with ACE soon to be in the business of bidding for bums on seats.

MERCURIO, who plays Scott Hastings, a 21-year-old ballroom dancing champion with a fiercely rebellious nature, in Strictly Ballroom, admits that the film's Cannes' acclaim - it was given a seven-minute standing ovation - and most popular film honor at the Melbourne and Sydney film festivals, is beyond even the most unrealistic dreams. "I'm sure we all dreamed, and once or twice I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great, if . . .?'," he recalled.

"But generally we conditioned ourselves to not get too carried away, even though we knew it was a great product, a wonderful experience for everybody which, I think, rubbed off on the film.

"For me, it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time; just as it was when I got the job with the dance company." In the background, little Elise Mercurio is begging her dad to take her for a spin on the Suzuki, but one more question begs: Does Paul Mercurio see his film career spiralling into galactic orbit as Hollywood hunk Patrick Swayze's did after Dirty Dancing? "I hope so; perhaps it will, maybe it won't," he responded. "I had that question asked of me again and again in Cannes - and how I compared myself to John Travolta. "I said, 'Well, John Travolta was the '70s dance star, Patrick Swayze the '80s, hopefully Paul Mercurio will be the '90s,'." Jesus Christ Superstar: The Concert opens August 14 at the National Tennis Centre, Flinders Park.