Duet by Amy Alipio, a profile of Gladys Celeste and Maria Mercader in Filipinas Magazine, May 2004 (Download PDF)

Excerpt from Movement to Music: Musicians in the Dance Studio by Katherine Teck pp 23-25, Greenwood Press, New York, 1990 (Download PDF) 

From On Point, Fall 1985:  

"When Cynthia Gregory took the stage to celebrate her 20th anniversary with ABT, she acknowledged with a hug a perpetually smiling woman, Gladys Celeste, who has been literally instrumental to her career.

"Cynthia’s friend, colleague and Lotto partner, Celeste is one of ABT’s five full-time rehearsal pianists.

"…It is fitting that Celeste played during the gala’s “Memories” section, which opened with the ballerina herself at the piano, playing a Chopin prelude. Celeste cites her many close relationships with dancers and choreographers as her greatest reward of a 25-year career, whose end is nowhere in sight. Among her friends is Jerome Robbins, with whom she worked frequently during his ABT years.

"During the original setting of Robbins’s Le Noces in 1965, when one of the male dancers couldn’t get the steps, Celeste jumped from behind the piano and demonstrated the dance herself, saying, “Come on and get it! I want to take a break.”

"Celeste had some early dance training, and her musical schooling was in the Philippines, which she left in 1956 to come to the United States. She joined ABT in 1960 when Agnes de Mille discovered the young pianist playing for a ballet class. In addition to her ABT rehearsal schedules at home and abroad, the workaholic Celeste has continued playing for classes both inside and outside ABT."