Baltimore’s Ayo Shag and TSU Flash have ‘danced their way into the hearts of America’

Standing at the top of Federal Hill Park on a sunny afternoon, two friends set up a tripod and angled a phone camera to capture the ideal scene. In an instant, Ryan Daly and Kenneth Worsley bust out a series of classic Baltimore club-style dance moves — their joy as infectious in real life as it appears on Instagram and TikTok.

“We genuinely love this thing so much that we’re willing to push it and willing to keep doing something about it every day,” Daly, 31, said.

More widely known on social media by their nicknames, “Ayo Shag” and “TSU Flash,” the Baltimore dancers have earned a fan base around the city and beyond, with a following of more than 200,000 on Instagram and over 700,000 on TikTok.

All eyes are on Daly and Worsley, whether they’re doing the crazy legs in a Royal Farms parking lot or sharing the spotlight at M&T Bank Stadium.

“They danced their way into the hearts of America,” said Ty-Quan “Gritzzz” Knight, a friend of Daly’s and Worsley’s since high school. “They never gave up.”

Now, the pair have plans to translate their success into two new projects: a children’s book in collaboration with Knight and a sports podcast, both of which they anticipate releasing next spring.

“We keep going every day, we keep pushing each other every day,” said Daly, who grew up in Essex and lives in Baltimore. Both he and Worsley work at a Baltimore Amazon warehouse — when they’re not dancing.

They met as sophomores at Kenwood High School in Essex, forging a relationship over Skittles candy and gym class. By the time they graduated in 2010, they had grown closer and started dancing together at parties on the weekends, Worsley said.

Both credit their mothers when it comes to their creativity: Worsley’s mom designed and modeled clothes as a student in Massachusetts, Daly’s was a gymnast and dancer.

“In the womb, Kenny was dancing. Always kicking, always active, always busy,” Worsley’s mom, Angela Denise Barnwell, said. “I’m not surprised to see him now continue to be active in the community. And the world’s looking at my son.”

“We were always dancing in the house,” Daly said of his mother, Victoria Grammar. “When she passed, it was like, ‘Alright, I want to keep doing this, because this is what I can remember from my mother.’”

Initially, Daly and Worsley found dancing inspiration in Michael Jackson and Chris Brown, giving breakdancing and hip-hop a spin. The style they settled on, however, is linked to the place they call home.

“The age range we was in, the time we was in, we have an original genre of music and dance in Baltimore called Baltimore club music,” said Worsley, 31, who lives in the Essex area and grew up in nearby Turner Station.

Baltimore club-style music is fast-paced and draws inspiration from house and other genres. Daly’s and Worsley’s go-to dance moves, they said, include “crazy legs,” the “SpongeBob,” “Cherry Hill,” “heel-toe,” “sidekicks” and the “power step.”

They’re quick to point out that they didn’t start the dance moves they’re most famous for showing off, like the “Park Heights Strut,” a two-step that’s taken off on social media thanks in large part to a local dancer known as Bunkey Jr. and a dance group called the “Top Tier Shiners.”

The “Baltimore Strut” recently went viral on TikTok — raking in millions of views — set to “I’ll Be Around,” a CeeLo Green song featuring Timbaland.

“We’re just here to help push the culture,” Daly said.

The duo began uploading videos of their dancing to MySpace and YouTube around 2010. Worsley, whom Daly called the “social media guy,” later got them going on Instagram and TikTok.

“I always was intrigued [by] analytics and page growth,” Worsley said. “Coding, analytics, algorithm — it’s all one little science, and I started learning it. Then, as new apps started getting built, new social platforms started coming about, [I’ve] seen how they take the same approach.”

But Baltimore’s dancing culture has changed since Daly and Worsley were younger. Baltimore club-style music, which Worsley said used to be “underground” — “that’s what made it hot” — is much more widely known, at least in part because they began sharing it.

Since around 2015, they’ve been carving out intentional moments to record their steps, a departure from the early days when they’d hope someone caught them dancing on camera while they were out at a club.

“Back in the day, you would go down to the docks at midnight on a Friday and you’d see so many dancers and what they would bring to the table, and that would be inspiration in itself,” Daly said. Now, their motivation comes from wanting to continue to show the world “what Baltimore can do.”

The pair admittedly can’t dance forever, Worsley said — so they have other projects in the works, including their first children’s book, “Shag & Flash & The Dance Against Doom.”

The project started when Knight, a former high school classmate who lives in North Carolina, approached them with a design for the book’s cover and a title, Worsley said. Knight has written and illustrated children’s books and stayed in touch with Daly and Worsley over social media in the decade-plus since they graduated.

The book they’re working on together, featuring Knight’s illustrations, will have a superhero comic book feel — with special powers named after dance moves. Set primarily in Baltimore, the book is also about teaching literacy and empowering kids.

“We wanted to have fun,” Knight, 31, said. “It’s just a message to the kids: No matter who’s against you, what’s against you, never stop believing in yourself.”

It’s been a “fruitful journey” working together, he added, saying the trio likely won’t stop with just one book.

Knight said he plans for the first book to be available in print and as an ebook.

Daly and Worsley are also preparing to launch a sports and entertainment podcast, with a focus on football.

As they tackle new projects, one thing remains constant: their friendship.

“We’ve never had that issue where we couldn’t talk to each other and be genuine,” Daly said.

And in the years since they started dancing together, their bond has been so effortless that “we kinda looked up and forgot about the time,” Worsley added.