One of the key personalities in terms of Bohuslav Martinů's artistic inspirations in the years 1912–1915 was the Russian actress and dancer Olga Vladimirovna Gzovská [1889–1962]. [...] In addition to her dramatic roles, Olga Gzovská performed solo at the National Theatre in 1912 and 1914 in so-called meloplastic performances, where she recited and danced to short musical excerpts to the accompaniment of a chamber instrumental cast. [Miloš] Šafránek writes that Martinů attended these performances.
In 1912 Olga Gzovská also guested at the National Theatre in Oscar Wilde's Salome, in which she apparently danced the Dance of the Seven Veils. The dance aesthetician and publicist Emanuel Siblík (1886–1941) wrote about her dancing in a text from 1922. He characterised her dance in Salome as a meloplastic drama in which she danced naked, wrapped only in butterfly-coloured veils, with a golden diadem on her head and long earrings in the antique style. [...]
Šafránek states that Martinů wrote Dances with Veils, H 93, for Gzovská in the spring of 1914, and in the catalogue of his youth compositions he includes a dedication to O. Gzovská. This ballet, however, has not survived and apart from a single mention by Šafránek and, according to him, in the catalogue of Harry Halbreich, who also assigned it a catalogue number, there is evidence of it and its connection with the person of Olga Gzovská only in an isolated magazine reference (Ilustrované listy, XXI, no. Šafránek believes that these Dances with Veils, otherwise known as Meloplastic Scenes, which Martinů sent to Gzovská, are two compositions. [...]
Abbreviated from: Sandra Srnková Bergmannová, Early Symphonic Works of Bohuslav Martinů and Issues Pertaining to Their Critical Edition. Doctoral dissertation, Prague, 2010, p. 27–36.