Hher toenails are painted red. I can see that, because I'm sitting at the edge of the catwalk. Just now three strippers were stamping there, I could smell them, beautiful boys, wild bodies. Now she's walking there, in bra and directoire. She serenely caresses her arms, her neck, her shoulders. I'm a good person, those gestures say, I'm soft.

She is 87.

With its softly lit promenade, Towards Friendship concludes such an immeasurable longing and brings a lump to my throat.

This performance, in the neighbourhood theatre complex 'rcth' on the Mathenesserdijk in the Rotterdam neighbourhood of Spangen, draws full houses. Anyone who has seen it immediately sends their friends and acquaintances there, hence. And yet Naar vriendschap... gnaws at a taboo. We don't want to know anything about it, but it affects us all. Sooner or later everyone gets a turn, but it must not be said: the elderly are sexual beings. And, doubly taboo: sometimes they are homosexual beings. That is what this performance is about. It is breathtakingly well made, fortunately, because it plays a dangerous game.

Theatre maker Paul Röttger asked a number of elderly homosexual men and women about the story of their lives. He had these stories adapted into the theatre texts that the actors of the rcth speak.

There they sit, they are types like the old storytellers were in their younger years. Types that they still are in their minds. How do I know that? Because the grey man or the wrinkled woman, whose story is being told, is sitting next to them. A camera transmits the reactions on their faces to two large screens. In this way, we not only hear what they remember, we also see what they feel when they think about it again. One is amused, another is sad or downright paralyzed. A woman snickers, haha, yes that's how it went, when she said to her husband: Piet, I think I have a different orientation - because that's what the doctor said. A man's face tightens. He is gay, and no one knew anything about it. Only God, but he didn't answer.

The decaying body is half of their story, the spirit is still there. Ancient can be very much alive and that is not always easy – this performance breathes that wisdom.

Director Röttger has instructed the elderly to relive their story as they listen. “That can be hard, very hard.” But they do it, and they succeed.

Now I was planning to go see Amour , that's the film about an elderly couple, with Jean-Louis Trintignant (82) and Emmanuelle Riva (85). Good film, I hear, but I'll skip it for now. Before I know it, I'm comparing all those old people and I'll pass on that.

Wait, choreographer Keren Levi has something new. Ever since her piece The Dry Piece , with four naked dancers slowly turning into four shiny white beans, I want to see everything from her.

This piece is called To Band. I didn't do it for the sake of it, but after that bunch of very old people I now see a bunch of very young people. The tall thin boys still look like girls. The girls are tendrils or temporary mommies, with those recently sprouted breasts and hips. Puppy fat disappears, muscles grow out, soon these will be men and women. Not yet. Centripetally they whirl across the music and playing floor. They attract each other, repel each other. They are fearless, but they don't realize it themselves. Not yet. That's what it feels like to be young, that's what Levi portrays. And oh, how beautiful that is.

Röttger with the old, Levi with the young – they grab the personalities of players who are not actors, but who can give themselves up without inhibition. They catch them generously in their fist and polish them up for the stage.

Take the very old mannequin in Rotterdam. She doesn't show fashion, she shows feeling. At the end of the catwalk she is caught in the embrace of a young man. A beautiful image, I don't often see something so sweet.

Afterwards I got to talk to her for a while. "It's nice that I can be in those arms every time," she said. She may be 87, she can't be bothered by that. And she's right.