Thursday night is likely to be a tearjerker at City Center. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater is paying tribute to Paul Szilard, the devoted impresario who for 35 years nurtured the company and took it all over the world.

Not too many people today can claim the title of “impresario.” And Mr. Szilard, who lives just steps from Lincoln Center, gets some mileage out of that fact.”I am the oldest impresario in the business,” he told me, adding that when people say he’s the best, he replies: “Naturally. There’s nobody left.”

The jet-setting, wheeling-dealing job of an impresario is much greater than its simple definition: a promoter or presenter of artistic ventures, typically in musical theater. It’s a job that requires both artistic and business savvy, boundless charm, the ability to mollify stars’ egos, but also a sizable ego of one’s own. As critic Clive Barnes brilliantly put it in his introduction to Mr. Szilard’s autobiography “Under My Wings,” an impresario is: “A man who presents, but first has to choose; a man who encourages, but first has to discern; a man who spreads a message that he first has to receive. And also a man who relies dangerously not only on his wits, but on the wit of others.”

Mr. Szilard has represented everybody who’s anybody in dance, but he has had an especially close relationship with the Ailey troupe. “It’s unusual to work for 35 years with a company,” he said.

This year, that working relationship is coming to a close. “They need change. They don’t want to. But I want to,” said Mr. Szilard, who enjoyed a personal friendship with founder Alvin Ailey and is still close to artistic director Judith Jamison, as well as many of the Ailey dancers. “They come to me, they tell me everything. I’m like the grandfather figure,” he said.

Born in Budapest (on the Pest side), Mr. Szilard received early dance training in Hungary, then went off to Paris. He toured as a classical ballet dancer with stars like Nora Kaye, Colette Marchand, and Sonia Arova. Though he danced many of the full-length ballet standards, he also made a name for himself through concert dance, in which he would present his own choreography set to music of his choosing. Before World War II, he lived in Paris, London, and Switzerland. But in 1940, when the Swiss were expelling foreigners, he and his wife/dance partner Ariane decided to go to America.

His account of how that happened (as told in his fascinating autobiography) makes the travel plans in the film “Casablanca” look like a cakewalk. Not only that, once they got to the United States, there was little work for them, so they accepted an offer to dance in China. On their way, they stopped in the Philippines to visit family, when the war broke out. The couple was stranded in Manila for four years.

Back in the states, Mr. Szilard returned to his life as a dancer and dance teacher with a Zelig-quality: he was everywhere and knew everyone important. He served as impresario to himself for a while, booking his own performances as a dancer and choreographer. But by 1954, he stopped dancing to begin working full-time as a presenter and producer.

In the process of putting together gala evenings, touring New York City Ballet around the world, and taking “West Side Story” to Japan, Mr. Szilard became a major performing arts personality. His connection with the Ailey company blossomed in the 1960s, but he didn’t take it on right away. After seeing the company perform in Switzerland, Ailey himself asked Mr. Szilard to become the company’s impresario.

The choreographer’s style, however, wasn’t firmly established. “It was jazz. It was modern. It wasn’t really Alvin Ailey yet,” he recalls. “So I said, ‘When you make up your mind, I will work with you.'”

Several years later, with the company stronger and the style more clearly defined, Mr. Szilard indeed came on board.

Within the context of his work with the Ailey company, Mr. Szilard recently explained to me some of the actual tasks of being impresario. Booking the company into venues and making plans are the sort of things that are just a matter of a phone call or two for him.

“I have personal contacts. I don’t have to write letters,” he said. Indeed, at any time, the phone in his apartment can ring and he’ll be off negotiating with Paris, while his guest sips very strong coffee and admires the Indian art and the Goya. (“A small Goya,” he says modestly.)

When taking the troupe abroad, he’d help set the programs to local tastes. “In England, they want ‘Revelations’ every night,” he said. But doing the same ballet night after night – even a masterpiece – gets tiring for the dancers. His no-nonsense response, though, reveals the way he does business: “If you don’t do it, you don’t sell tickets.”

Mr. Szilard considers it an advantage to his career he spent time on stage himself. “It’s a great thing that I have been a dancer. I am an agent, impresario, and producer, but I am always involved artistically,” he explained. “I have the right to discuss programming. They don’t have to listen. I’m very artistic, so they listen.”

That’s not to say he doesn’t butt heads with those in charge. Of Ms. Jamison, he says, “She doesn’t give up easily.”

In his book, he goes into greater detail about ways in which he helped keep the company running smoothly. There was a stretch of a few months during which Ms. Jamison and Ailey would not speak to each other. “I thought it was unthinkable to tour the company around the world with the founder and artistic director not speaking to its star.”

He finessed a situation, while in a Berlin theater where the company was rehearsing, so that two soon would have to talk – things were shortly back to normal. But this is not mere celebrity wrangling. His book is filled with examples of personal attention motivated from his respect for the artists (in addition to the reality of the bottom line).

When he speaks of Ms. Jamison, it is with awe for one of the greatest stage artists he has known. “Her personality, her artistry, her expression,” he says with a glow of admiration, which continues when he recalls touring her as a solo artist. “She became the toast of Paris. She had the same fame as Josephine Baker,” he said.

It is this level of appreciation (tempered by honest assessments) that has surely kept clients coming back to Mr. Szilard. Then there’s the fact that he knows the whole world and seems as pleased about dishing their dirty little secrets as he is about keep them. He’s a sly, fascinating character to whom a tribute is more than due.