There's a new wind blowing through the performing arts this month, with two companies showing the fruits of "works in progress" instead of finished productions, although any difference in quality seems to be marginal.

Dumb Type, the all-inclusive performing/visual arts company from Kyoto, first introduced the concept of showing an almost-finished piece here, taking its cue from trends overseas to present the progress made on a piece by a deadline dictated by grants, commissions, sponsorships and the like.

Works in progress are assumed to lack the necessary finishing touches, and critics customarily go easier in the rare summaries they make of them.

For dancers such as Kei Miyata of the group Karas, presenting works in progress offers the chance to "see what works, and what doesn't." Ticket prices are kept low. Other performers show works in progress at their studio, and save the main theaters for the real thing. Many, of course, use the concept as a soft landing, especially in a busy season.

But some works in progress are no cop-out. This month's "Hamlet Clone" by the group Daisan Erotica, based on "Hamlettmaschine" by the late Heiner Mueller, benefited enormously from the irreverent trial by fire it received last summer before last week's sold-out success at Asahi Square in Asakusa Jan. 12-16.

The only major quibble with "WD," the work in progress presented by performance group Pappa Tarahumara at Theater Tram Jan. 17-18, was that it was far too polished. This is a quirky, off-center company blending modern choreography, the operatic singing talents of its performers in abstract scores and an amazing collection of objets designed and made in-house for every production. It is hard to imagine how the vast majority of the material in "WD" could be cut or amended in a final version.

Director Hiroshi Koike has brought this company a long way in 10 years since the initial large-scale productions "Parade" and "Stone Age" established a fresh dynamic for the stage. From a purely abstract, gentle movement with a pronounced sense of ma along the lines of classical Japanese dance, his work has become more focused on the dramatic pulse that ensures momentum. The company has also received the Grand Prix International Video Danse for two straight years. And the performers, among them Mariko Ogawa, Makoto Matsushima and Sachiko Shirai, have benefited from joint projects with Hong Kong theater companies and other collaborations.

There was not one false move in "WD," which stands for "What Did We Do?" It's in the tradition of this country's performing arts groups who choose the most unlikely titles and -- let's face it -- company names. "Tarahumara" comes from an extinct native people in the Americas and is a reminder of Koike's earlier desire to find primitive movement common to all peoples and present it in performances. "Pappa" is possibly more straightforward.

The subtitle for this piece is "I Was Born," an all-inclusive approach to the production, especially when considered in conjunction with the dividing cells in the petri dishes on the cover of the flier.

"WD" shows Pappa Tarahumara in Theater of the Absurd -- not in text, but noticeably in facial grimaces with the performers in white-face, choreographed movement and the odd juxtaposition of objets to their human handlers, such as the incongruous sight of a toothbrush as Ogawa's tool of emphasis. This is an altogether more whimsical, playful production, with the company's diva, Ogawa, as narrator, or singer of the story, dressed in a bright yellow robe and the others costumed in loose-fitting creams and browns.

But if this is to be reviewed for "fully progressed" performances, maybe cutting the scene in which rag dolls are passed around with the split-second accuracy of professional basketball players would clean up "WD," unless the purpose of the scene is to insert something jarring in otherwise perfectly aligned spokes. There are very few moments in "WD" when the choreography smacks of workshop exercises, but this is one egregious example.

As ever, Koike works best with many rites and rituals.

A grave procession of travellers with battered suitcases wends its way around the stage to the sound of a ship's horn, a wedding procession devolves into the frantic guests overturning the banqueting table, a hanging party hoists one performer by invisible harness into the flies. The director is the master of seemingly disconnected gestures, offering us unsettling glimpses and echoes of action against silence, fragments of images and sound.

With their tight, tai chi flexibility and control, the dancers stitch together a tapestry of scenes of a life, some in comic pantomime, as over the top as a Dame taunting the pussy in "Dick Whittington," others with great delicacy and subtlety. And there are fantastic moments hovering at the edge of the main action when Koike wants us to doubt our retina reception, such as when a lit light bulb descends into the gaping maw of a reclining dancer, or the steering wheel on an engine starts to turn and control the movements of the machinery.

"WD" is one of Pappa Tarahumara's most promising recent productions. We can only look forward to the "finished" version.