Enhypen's Niki is all grown up 🥹

Thumbnail image source and credit: 니키

Okay so, first things first, we all know Nishimura Riki is a great dancer.

The boy has been dancing from age 3, and any Engene will proudly point you to old videos of Niki as a kid showing his talent and learning his craft alongside his older sister and many dancers senior to him.

It was also clear from debut that he lives and breathes dance when he’s on stage. His movements are always clean, full of intention and natural groove, making him easy to spot even among amazing performers like the other Enhypen members.

But, Niki debuted as part of Enhypen in 2020 when he was just 14 (yep, let that sink in 🫠), meaning he still had plenty of potential to grow into. I mean he was, and still is, physically growing, and while his dancing never looked awkward because of it, it’s fair to say we hadn’t seen Niki in his ‘final form’ yet.

Fast forward to June 2024, I was sitting at my desk procrastinating, and came across an Enhypen performance of Fatal Trouble.

Is it a comeback? is it not a comeback? Who knows 😩

If you don’t have time to watch the whole video (you should if you want to see Enhypen giving peak vampire vibes), skip to 2:16. Let me tell you, the jaw I dropped… the gasp I gusped… here was Niki, all grown up.

And it’s not just the deeper-than-expected vocals either. The confidence and maturity in his stage presence, which I used to see only in glimpses, was now burning through the screen. And he’s only 18, so I’m guessing this is just the start.

If you still don’t quite get what I mean, let me just show you.

Here’s a Niki fancam from 3 years ago dancing to Fever. This fancam got over 1 million views, so safe to say his performance skills were already getting attention back then.

Watch 0:38 to 1:14.

You can definitely see moments of brilliance in his dancing (like at 0:43 and 1:04), but it’s glimpses, it comes and goes. Niki is just performing, technically very well, but it feels like there’s a limited understanding behind his movements, or maybe it’s just a certain level of self-reservation and inexperience being so young and a rookie idol.

Now here’s Niki’s Fatal Trouble fancam from last week (also doing numbers).

Watch 0:32 to 1:27.

This time you can see Niki really expressing - there’s so much more understanding behind his movements, there’s an internalisation of the sentiment, less self-reservation - and you kinda can’t stop watching him.

Naturally, this kind of thing comes with age, maturity and experience in dance. It has been a gradual process and Fatal Trouble is not the first time Niki has expressed his dancing with maturity. But it’s the first time I’ve really, like really, noticed it. Then again, I’ve been out of the loop for a while 🥲

I don’t think it’s just because the Fatal Trouble choreo suits him. You can see the same maturity in his recent performance as Artist of the Month on Studio Choom. When I say ‘maturity’, I’m also not talking about the genre of the song - it’s not just because Fatal Danger had a ‘sultry’ vibe.

At first, the song choice surprised me. Trendsetter and Humble are not easy tracks to dance to, with bare melodies and lots of space to fill between beats and lyrics, it’s hard to bridge those gaps convincingly enough to hold a viewer’s attention and suspend their disbelief from start to finish.

But Niki does. I could try to point to his flawless execution, his easy groove, his facial expressions as reasons why his performance works, but the reality is that Niki did all these things before. I think what has changed is internal, so now it’s the artistic quality and depth of those things that are coming across so much stronger than before.

Engenes have been calling Niki a ‘dance prodigy’, and I gotta say I agree. To reach this level so young is rare, and if he keeps going on this trajectory he might end up up there with Kpop legends like Taemin pretty soon.

Let’s just hope that Belift recognises it and continues giving him the space to grow and come into his own as an artist 🔥

Here’s the video of Enhypen playing with and feeding tiny kittens ❤️