With savings from his job as a hardware-store manager, Loring went to New York City near the depth of the Great Depression in 1934, and was taken into George Balanchine's and Lincoln Kirstein's newly formed School of American Ballet. With the Russian Imperial training given by SAB, he danced with Balanchine's first American company, American Ballet, and even auditioned successfully for Michel Fokine. When Kirstein formed the specifically American choreographic training company Ballet Caravan in 1936, Loring and Lew Christensen (who together formed a little company, Dance Players, 1941–42) emerged as its outstanding products.