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Photo Credit: Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

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In April 1965, Twyla Tharp spun a yo-yo, stretched forward like a ski jumper while anchored by a pair of wooden shoes, and stood in an extended relevé. Such were the ingredients of her first piece, “Tank Dive,” which lasted around 10 minutes and was performed in an art studio at Hunter College.

Fifty years later, she’s still making dances.

“Woo-hoo,” she said in a deadpan voice that fooled no one. She’s excited. In any field, but especially dance, working for 50 years is a feat, and she knows it.

“Very few people make it this far,” she said over a late lunch at a restaurant near Barnard College, her alma mater, where she is now teaching and rehearsing. “And what sustains you to do that?”

For Ms. Tharp, 73, it comes down to a question, one she said she asks herself before starting any new project: “What is dance?”

The question will inform two lecture-performances, at Barnard on April 13 and Hunter College on April 16, that kick off Ms. Tharp’s anniversary. She will discuss “Tank Dive” as well as “The Fugue,” her 1970 breakthrough, and present a new work, set to Beethoven’s late String Quartet No. 13, Opus 130.

Though Ms. Tharp will begin a 10-week national tour of all new dances in the fall — it arrives at the David H. Koch Theater in New York in November — her April presentations will be in a bare-bones studio setting: no costumes, no lights, no sets. In her 1972 work “The Bix Pieces,” Ms. Tharp spoke about her beginnings and ideas about art; this new program further reveals her philosophical approach.

She says she now recognizes that “Tank Dive” was something of a manifesto in which three actions — down, out and up — explored the trajectory of movement. As she explained, “It has nothing to do with dance steps, but it has to do with a bigger purpose for dance, which is movement in the world.”

Ms. Tharp has sent an immense amount of spellbinding movement into the world, from her genre-crossing dances, performed on stages, in museums and outdoors, to Broadway musicals like Movin’ Out and Come Fly Away. She’s choreographed for films, including Hair, Amadeus,and White Nights, and in 1973 created “Deuce Coupe,” regarded as the first crossover work, mixing modern and classical dance. “In the Upper Room,” “Push Comes to Shove” and “Bach Partita,” to name a few, are now staples of classical repertory.

She’s written three books and is working on a fourth. Both erudite and a populist, Ms. Tharp has a little of a life coach in her, judging by the way she both nurtures her dancers and encourages others to find their own creative spark, as she did with her 2003 book, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. (Even Howard Stern is a fan.)

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