IMAX Film Maker and His Pursuit of Achievement

In ballet there is no winning or losing. There is only the search for the impossible goal--perfection. --Bolshoi ballerina

Nina Ananiashvili in “To the Limit.”

A rock climber scales the face of a treacherous cliff like a human fly. A skier hurtles down a slope at 60 m.p.h. A Russian ballerina leaps effortlessly into the air. Sweating and panting, speeding and soaring, the stars of the new giant-screen IMAX movie push themselves “To the Limit.”

Designed to explore how the human body works and proclaim its potential, the 38-minute film opens today on the five-story-high screen at Mitsubishi IMAX Theater at the California Museum of Science and Industry.

The movie’s producer-director, Greg MacGillivray, had to meet a few challenges of his own, such as filming champion rock climber Tony Yaniro suspended thousands of feet up and making audiences feel as if they were racing down a hill like Olympian skier Maria Walliser.

But getting to Moscow to film 26-year-old Bolshoi Ballet ballerina Nina Ananiashvili proved to be a nearly insurmountable obstacle.

“It was a road fraught with tremendous red tape, almost endless red tape,” MacGillivray said. The whole process took about 2 1/2 years for what resulted in less than 10 minutes of footage.

MacGillivray, who has produced “To Fly,” “Speed” and six other IMAX films, wanted to include ballet to broaden the $2.8-million film’s scope beyond sports and science. “I wanted this to be about (the) pursuit of achievement in any endeavor,” he said in his Laguna Beach office recently. Sequences that switch repeatedly from exacting rehearsal to polished performance at the Bolshoi Theatre are among those intended to show the effort required to excel in ballet, to make the difficult look easy, he said.

MacGillivray selected Ananiashvili when the Bolshoi appeared here in 1987. He cited her arching leaps, later shot in slow motion, and the “joy and excitement about dancing in her eyes.” He was also impressed by the rigorous Bolshoi training for which children must enter boarding school. Bolshoi dancer Irek Mukahamedov appears in the film as well, though the focus in on Ananiashvili.

MacGillivray knew that working in the Soviet Union could lead to a bureaucratic bog, but he felt encouraged when the company’s artistic director Yuri Grigorovich saw an IMAX movie for the first time in Los Angeles.

Grigorovich came away insisting that the Bolshoi, whose name means “big” and a group that is widely considered one of the world’s greatest ballet companies, “ ‘must have IMAX!’ ” MacGillivray said.

Still, Soviet government approval wasn’t forthcoming. Despite glasnost, “the main characteristic of the Russians is that no one wants to make a decision that’s out of the ordinary or that they can be blamed for,” he said. “We needed a letter of approval from the minister of culture and no one would ask him for it.”

Finally however, the OK came with help from Occidental Petroleum chairman Dr. Armand Hammer, whose close ties to Soviet government officials helped rush American medical aid to Chernobyl during the 1987 nuclear-plant disaster. At Hammer’s urging, the cultural minister wrote the approval letter. Hammer’s documentary film operation later helped shoot the ballet sequence.

Glitches continued to crop up during three weeks of filming in Moscow, MacGillivray said. For instance, a plan to shoot a full-company, fully costumed performance of the ballet “Don Quixote” fell through. Instead, Ananiashvili appears in short excerpts as Myrta, the queen of the Wilis from “Giselle,” as Kitri, the lead in “Don Quixote,” and as herself relaxing in Moscow’s Red Square.

Still, all went fairly well on the whole, he said. About 80 Soviet film and ballet technicians assisting his 10-member crew were warm and helpful, pledging to work as many hours as necessary to complete the job on time. And, while the film’s material essentially confines itself to dance, there was no creative control or tampering from the Soviets.

“They looked at the script and said ‘fine.’ They had to approve (each site) we wanted to film, but never had any objection to anything we wanted to do. They even allowed us to shoot from the top of one of the highest buildings in Moscow. I don’t think that would have been allowed several years ago. There was a whole new freshness about things.

“It was absolutely fascinating to be there,” said MacGillivray, 43, who has filmed in nearly every country. “Yes, the red tape was frustrating, but I’m certain it’s always going to be the most interesting filming experience I’ll ever encounter, especially having gone there now, with people opening up and feeling this new freedom.”