YORK had no fewer than four festivals vying for attention over the weekend: the traffic-jam frenzy of the Balloon Fiesta on Knavesmire; the Food and Drink beano in Parliament Street, and the double arts whammy of York Mediale and TakeOver 2018.

The balloons, the food, the drink, have exited stage left, but the other two continue their 10-day runs until Saturday. You might argue that two fests at once is over-egging the arts omelette, but there are reasons for the overlap.

For the first time, TakeOver, the annual event that gives 12 to 26-year-olds the chance to programme and run a festival, has been taken under the wing of York Mediale, York’s hi-tech festival of music, theatre and art with a digital twist, while retaining its relationship with TakeOver founders York Theatre Royal.

The “media” part of the “media arts” title for York’s status as the first UK UNESCO Creative City of Media Arts is not entirely helpful. Let us assume “media” refers to “various artforms”, but in a nutshell this is a festival designed to take the arts into the science arena, the technological template for the future.

Alexander Whitley Dance Company headed to York with two works, the first a Friday premiere of an immersive performance by four dancers to the fractured rhythms of Beatrice Dillon, Strange Stranger that explored our routine interaction with technology, at York Guildhall. Alas another festival, Markington Harvest Festival no less, prevented your reviewer from experiencing it, but Saturday night offered a second Whitley show, 8 Minutes, at a well attended York Theatre Royal.

Collaborating with scientists from STFC RAL Space, Whitley took inspiration from solar science research to create a seamless hour’s dancing to convey sunlight’s eight-minute journey travelling 93 million miles to Earth. The eight dancers, male and female dressed neutrally, performed against an installation of steadily changing imagery by visual artist Tal Rosner that grew ever brighter, to the accompaniment of an electronic score by Daniel Wohl, that became all sound and fury. Moving images were as much a distraction as a mood board.

The dancing looped and flowed onwards and onwards, inwards and outwards, invariably graceful and mesmeric, often in semi-darkness, with a brief switch to itchy, staccato movement mirroring early silent film. By comparison with Northern Ballet or Phoenix Dance Theatre, however, 8 Minutes lacked rising thrills, danger, breathtaking interplay, or even surprise, and it felt too distant.

TakeOver 2018, meanwhile, took over York St John University’s new performance space on the upper deck at Spark: York for New Voices, a day of new writing on Sunday, initiated by artistic director Jessy Roberts, pictured. The first three had sold out, with people even standing at the back. Your reviewer caught the fourth, Toby King’s Orangutan, wherein Saffia Sage played Alice Fuller, 24, restless and candid about sex, her parents’ divorce and her fascination with orangutans. Minimum props, basic lighting, it was the antithesis of 8 Minutes, driven by vibrant writing and a dynamic performance.

Art meets the future in York Mediale, but there will always be a place for the basic tools of storytelling too, reliant on imagination. In addition, it is good to see a designated creative space adding to the variety at Spark.