By Paula Day

Knee deep in brilliant balloons and shimmering, floating flakes, the dancers brushed aside strands of drifting confetti and took their bows.

It was a moment that makes all the hard work worth it for Jennifer Byokawski. The Atlanta Ballet had just completed the world premiere of "By George!" and the audience was applauding.

For weeks the 19-year-old apprentice to the company had juggled university class work, ballet lessons and rehearsals in preparation for that moment.

"I just love to dance," she said in an earlier interview. Her face, with its large hazel eyes, perky, up-tilted nose and engaging smile, radiated energy as she talked. "I do it to entertain other people, plus it makes me happy. Performances with lights, costumes, live music and audiences -- to hear the audience clapping, cheering -- I look forward to the performances."

A parishioner of St. John Neumann Church in Lilburn, Miss Byokawski has been dancing since she was three years old. Now in her second season with the company, she says, "I love it here. We're like a big family." She was one of six apprentices selected from 50 who auditioned in the spring of 1989. As part of the corps de ballet, dancers who frame solo performances, she is gaining experience and learning the style of artistic director Robert Barnett. She hopes to become a full-fledged corps member in the next year or so and eventually a soloist with the company. Last spring she danced her first solo as Little Red Riding Hood in its production of excerpts from Tchaikovsky's "The Sleeping Beauty."

With the Atlanta Ballet Jennifer Byokawski has had the opportunity to perform in a variety of works ranging from classical to contemporary. These have included Glazounov's "Raymonda Variations," the Snow sequence and Marzipan in Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker," corps dances in Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" and "The Four Temperaments," a work of the late choreographer Georgia Balanchine. Someday she hopes to dance Juliet in Prokofiev.

Such aspirations have a price.

"Coming in every day and always looking your best in class is a challenge," she said. "You're always trying to be better than someone else. You have to have a very high competitive spirit to be a dancer."

The Atlanta Ballet at 61 is the oldest ballet company in the United States. At present it consists of 18 company members and 10 apprentices structures as the corps de ballet, designated soloists and principals. The principal dancers perform the leads in a given work.

The company opened the season with "The Red Shoes," and after completing its November 15 to 17 performances of "By George!," "Prodigal Son," and "The Four Temperaments," it traveled this week to Taipei, Taiwan, on its first international tour in more than three decades.

There it will dance at the National Theatre of Taiwan November 23 through 25. As guests of the Taiwanese theater, it will perform three Balanchine ballets, "Prodigal Son," "The Four Temperaments," and "Serenade." Atlantans will dance the principal roles in "Serenade," and Taiwanese will make up the corps. The 35 dancers and members of the artistic and production crew from Atlanta will return November 26.

The trip to the Far East is not the first for Jennifer Byokawski. At five-foot-five, she does not measure up for modeling assignments in the United States, but spent a month in 1988 and two months in 1989 modeling in Japan, where women are small in stature and so are the models. While there she took ballet lessons and remembers a different approach.

"There seemed to be more emphasis on the upper body during practice, on total facial expression. Emphasis here is on precision and technique." She admits to being put off by a cultural attitude of Japanese men who treat women as "second-class citizens."

Miss Byokawski has a full day. The sophomore at Georgia State University took 10 course hours during the fall quarter and will take 15 in the winter quarter. She plans to major in accounting as "just something to fall back on" if for any reason her ballet dreams don't materialize.

A normal day begins at 6 a.m., with university classes lasting from 8 to 9, technique classes at the Atlanta Ballet from 10 to 11:30, ballet rehearsals from Noon to 6 p.m. and then back to evening classes at Georgia States. She returns home around midnight.

This schedule has been more hectic recently in preparation for quarterly exams and the Taiwan trip and there will be no let-up after the tour because the Nutcracker will open in December.

"Sometimes it's real frustrating," she admits. "I get so tired. My feet hurt. My body aches. I don't want to get out of bed. You do begin to wonder why you put yourself through this, but performing pays off."

"I just love to dance."