Performer and choreographer Alan Sutherland is known in the Seattle community as a butoh performer. But what is butoh? This description from dancer Iwana Masaki is an interesting place to start:

"I have never heard of a butoh dancer entering a competition. Every butoh performance itself is an ultimate expression; there are not and cannot be second or third places. If butoh dancers were content with less than the ultimate, they would not be actually dancing butoh, for real butoh, like real life itself, cannot be given rankings."