First-ever military tattoo show comes to Colorado Springs

It’s something you’d expect in a military town like Colorado Springs but most people still are unfamiliar with it.

On Saturday at World Arena, organizers staged the area’s first Colorado International Military Tattoo.

Not to be confused with the standard definition of “tattoo,” which refers to body art, a military tattoo is a musical and dance performance.

About 3,000 people enjoyed the two-hour show featuring music, singing and dancing from military bands, firefighters and other first responders, and professional entertainers.

Joe Poch of Colorado Springs, the show’s director, said the tattoo’s history began 400 years ago in the Netherlands and is in the same military tradition as morning reveille or taps at dusk.

Poch said “tattoo” is a rough translation of the Dutch phrase for “turn off the taps,” and the music was meant to tell innkeepers to stop serving beer to soldiers and for the troops to return to their barracks. Over the intervening centuries, a military tattoo has come to mean a show of military-themed music and performances.

Poch said there are 10 to 15 tattoos in the U.S. and about 50 worldwide.

So why would an event that seems such a natural for Colorado Springs take so long to arrive?

“There’s a lot of logistics involved,” Poch said. “It takes an alignment of a lot of pieces. I think it was 18 months ago when I first had the idea. And each tattoo reflects the local culture, which is why we included Native American drummers.”

Many people confused the military tattoo with the more familiar meaning of tattoo — body art.

“We found that even in this military town, only one in 10 knew about the military tattoo,” Poch said. “Some (tattoos) are larger, some are smaller. Ours is about in the middle.”

Poch said about half of the 350 performers are from the Colorado Springs area, with the rest from Denver, other states and other nations.

“We’re already planning for next year,” he said. “We want to make this an annual event.”