DETROIT — Brazilian-born Christina Kammuller, 53, teaches women ranging in age from their 30s to their 60s how to dance on tippy toes — in tutus.

It’s an entrancing sight.

Kammuller, a one-time principal dancer with a Brazilian ballet company, teaches classes in a Keego Harbor, Mich., studio that attracts women who’ve mustered the courage to indulge in childhood fantasies of pirouetting across a dance floor. In Kammuller’s classes, you’ll find senior citizens in tutus and pointe shoes who startle you with their agility, finesse and fluid rhythm.

“It just has amazing ramifications for me,” says Mitzi Schramm, a grandmother and freelance writer and editor from Southfield, Mich. Schramm, who is older than 60, has taken ballet and pointe classes from Kammuller for 20 years.

Charmed by ballerinas as a child, Schramm started ballet classes in her 30s, even as her own daughters shunned them.

“Yeah, it makes me feel better about myself. I feel like I’m accomplishing something, and I can do things other people my age can’t do,” says Schramm. “We’re all passionate about it. There’s something that makes you a groupie.”

Kammuller’s classes draw newcomers and veteran dance teachers alike. She has developed a following among fitness-conscious women who’ve moved to the area from Japan with husbands who work in the auto industry. For all of these women, the mastery of ballet allows them to celebrate the beautiful ways their bodies can move, regardless of age and size.

This adult-only clientele serendipitously found Kammuller.

Kammuller’s classes are structured, so students learn a piece over a two-week period.

“I want to give them a very nicely choreographed class where they feel they are actually dancing, and not doing just mechanical, repetitive steps,” she explains.

The lure of ballet drew Kammuller in when she was a 10-year-old growing up in Salvador, on Brazil’s eastern coast. She preferred ballet to all else, and insisted that her mother change any appointment with a doctor or a dentist that could interfere with her lessons.

She was a principal dancer for several years with Brazil’s Guaira Ballet Theatre, which found its footing in contemporary ballet, but which also performed such classics as “The Nutcracker” and “Don Quixote.”

When Kammuller was invited to dance in Canada in 1986, she met her future husband, a native Detroiter and dancer himself. They married and moved to Michigan. After she had a daughter 21 years ago, to keep limber and busy, Kammuller took an adult ballet class through a Southfield, Mich., recreation department program and was soon asked by the teacher to take over.

She was ambivalent at first — as a professional, she was used to seeing dancers in perfect shape. But she was touched by her classmates’ desire and determination.

“The minute I started teaching the class, I saw them so willing to learn. They were asking questions. The minute they showed that much interest, I was in it,” said Kammuller.

Dance and ballet can benefit people of all ages, says Dr. Steven Karageanes, a sports medicine specialist with the Detroit Medical Center who has treated the Rockettes during the dancers’ visits to the area.

“I think a ballet class is wonderful — the flexibility, the grace and it’s just fun,” says Karageanes.

Like all people embarking on an exercise program, he cautions folks to first talk to their doctor.

Kammuller’s students come for a variety of reasons.

The lone male in a Friday advanced ballet class is Jon Atwood, 24, of Sterling Heights, Mich., who is pursuing a degree in dance at Marygrove College. “Nothing makes me sweat more than ballet,” he says.

Another student, Peggy Wright, 49, is a ballet teacher who judges young dancers on their mastery of the Cecchetti ballet method.

“You can never stop learning. It’s a merciless art form,” says Wright.