JULIE Tolentino is nervous. The last time she trod on Glaswegian soil was in 1995 with Ron Athey & Company's intensely liberating 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life - a radical, ritualistic performance revolving around images of suffering, torture, healing, and transcendence. She's been told that shut doors were opened by their arrival.

Her history reads like a Who's Who of the hippest. She'd appeared in Madonna's Sex Book, owns New York's intimate and sexually charged lesbian night spot, the Clit Club, and continues to perform in and manage David Rousseve's Reality dance company She has popped up in countless music videos and films alongside the likes of Chaka Khan, Primus, and Tom Kalin and in campaigns such as Kissing Doesn't Kill.

Born in San Francisco to a Filipino father and El Salvadorian mother, Tolentino knew from an early age that ''there are two sides of every coin, my heritage has given me compassion for different situations. That is what brought me into a life with so many pathways''. Multi-faceted from birth, she understands the power of labels, identifying strongly as a dyke, performer, and a person of colour.

So what could possibly make her nervous? She is currently in residence in Glasgow's Tramway, working on her first full-length piece, Mestiza, which opens today. The title refers in Latino culture to the notion of tainted blood. Puffing away on cigarettes, this startlingly beautiful, slight woman with a strong open face is, well, many people. She talks non-stop, as one might expect from someone used to bustling New York cafes - excitedly filling in unwelcome gaps with flashes of frankness and a desire to relate. Describing her cover photograph in this month's Diva magazine as a ''Filipino-

tranny-hustler-girl-boy'' look, she laments that she never gets to be all the things she is at one time.

Hailing from her current home in the hectic melting-pot of the Big Apple, Tolentino's life is a non-stop

whirlwind of meetings, e-mails, rehearsals, and daily activism. A sort of friendly Tasmanian Devil - always on the go. True to form, but oddly for one who mediates, her nightmare would be to do nothing, claiming: ''often it's when we sit we forget the most.'' So Tolentino is the sort of person who reads while walking. She does not want to miss out. And can you blame her?

Unsurprisingly for someone who thrives on challenges, she has chosen to throw herself into the frying pan by making a new work in a

foreign country with complete strangers. When selecting these participants, she explains, ''the priority was to find people who could consider themselves living in a few different worlds. People who feel slightly out of their element the whole time''.

And perhaps because of such a frenetic life, her interest in movement lies with ''attention to the smallest movement. I like small things, quiet things unfolding. There is a need to start pulling the thread tighter with what looks like disparate parts''. This metaphor of threads can be seen literally in slide projections where her mouth has been sewn shut. But this is not a shocking show, instead it aims to balance visual installations with endurance, an ambient attitude, live video, and what Tolentino calls ''references to the eye, exploring how we see and connect.''

Mestiza is shrouded throughout in a carefully constructed soundtrack by DJ Aldo Hernandez. The vocal terrorist and Aids activist. Diamanda Galas, whose encouragement of Tolentino is partly recognisable for this piece, has also contributed one of her more mantra-based works.

Pinpointing her greatest success as managing to hold on to ''a youthful willingness, while also being completely nervous, worried, and paranoid'', Tolentino's desire to embrace extremes has opened many doors. ''It's behind closed doors where all the beauty is - where you fall in love, find out about yourself, and that's what we're doing here - letting the closed doors open. It is saying - when you are in here it looks this good and bad and everything you expect explodes, and everything you want you don't want anymore. Mestiza is that space where you can make choices, so when you walk out you can go on again.''

So if you are feeling a little out of synch, maybe it is time to connect with, to quote The Verve's recent hit song, Bitter-Sweet Symphony, some of the ''million different people'' that make up Julie Tolentino.

n Mestiza is at Tramway, from today until Saturday.