TONIGHT the Angels take to the Tron stage, but for Chris Thomson, rock musician and leader of the Bathers, they arrived nearly a year ago. They came from out of the blue (more precisely, by telephone), setting off a chain of coincidences.

Catarina Lappin of Scottish Ballet called to say that she wanted his music for her new piece in the 1996 Choreographic Workshops, part of Scottish Ballet's tradition of showcasing young dancemakers from within the company.

The piece was inspired by two poetic movies by Wim Wenders: Wings Of Desire and Far Away, So Close. The theme surrounded a young addict, his lover, and the intervention of a couple of cool-looking angels. Catarina had heard Angel On Ruskin on the Bathers' Sunpowder album.

Contact came through a mutual friend, the singer Jerry Burns, whose own composition Wings of Desire was inspired by the same Wenders movie. Chris immediately thought of his own first brush with ballet: intrigued by Michael Clark's use of music by the Fall for a Scottish Ballet commission, he then saw the Clark company in action to the sound of T-Rex and the Velvet Underground. Now his own famously cinematic music was in the same frame.

A year later, Lappin is keen to see her extended and retitled Wings of Desire take flight again. Especially, Jerry observes, since the collaboration between singer P J Harvey and Rambert Dance (choreographed by Mark, son of Catarina's hero, Christopher Bruce) took place after their own initial venture. Chris says he wanted to make some changes to the music, but was told firmly that the beats were staying just as they were. By compensation, the Bathers now play a short set before the main piece and Jerry sings a prologue.

The meeting of cultures fascinates them all. For reasons of staging, rehearsal time, and the vagaries of rock performance, the music tracks will be played from tape, but the vocals are live, performed by Jerry and by Chris and Hazel from the Bathers. Jerry says that one day, everything will be live and there'll be some scared dancers on stage.

An actress before she started recording, Jerry notes how the presence of the singers, even with minimal movement, changes the balance of the dance picture. But then both she and Chris see themselves as being part of a wider community of performers, offering work to new audiences, breaking those barriers. Jerry recalls Michael Clark, years ago, saying that he'd like to dance to her early song of romantic regret, Pale Red. Maybe that, too, was another beginning.

n Wings of Desire is performed at The Tron Theatre, Glasgow, tonight and tomorrow.