Silverlight, MVVM & Animations

When you’re working with the Model-View-ViewModel pattern in Silverlight, sooner or later you’ll run into the same problem most of us run into: what about animations?  Theoretically, if you want to follow the MVVM design pattern you’re using, your animation should be initiated from the ViewModel (no code behind on your View, remember?), but due the separation between your View and your ViewModel, the ViewModel shouldn’t know about a specific View.  It should exist indepently of it, so, for example, you can easily use the same ViewModel for multiple Views.

So, how do you solve this problem?  How do you get animations on your View while still respecting the MVVM pattern (more or less so, depending on your implementation)? 

Binary Bob has a very, very interesting post about this on his blog.  He talks about the problem, and then discusses several options on how to solve it, including sample code.  I especially like the StoryBoardManager-solution.  Make sure you check it out!