Hello.

As a server owner it would be exceedingly useful to my current project to be able to play gestures/poses with a serverside command much like how the /setskin command allows you to set someone's model. The utility of this for RPG-like servers is obvious, but for more small scale SMPs being able to synchronize animations using a couple of command blocks would be neat. This would pair well with this issue's Export/Import Animations suggestion, allowing you to share an animation with multiple players, and then play it simultaneously to all.

It could be formatted like:
/setanimation <player> <animation_name> <true/false>

The last parameter making it also possible to cancel the animation (which would be useful in the case of poses or longer gestures).

Also, for animations that have spaces in their names, quotation marks could be used, like:
/setanimation CoolDude "Super Cool Animation" true

Intricacies Lightning Round:

1. Animations tied to specific events like being damaged for example should not be able to be played this way. (Unless there might be some utility to that somehow?.. I just think it would get confusing.)
2. Animations that don't exist for that specific player's model should just be ignored rather than printing some kind of error message to either party.
3. If multiple animations have the same name, then perhaps they might be able to be picked at random? If this is too difficult then choosing one arbitrarily based on it's internal ID might be an option?
4. Some kind of "all" option should be possible in the <animation_name> parameter to allow you to halt any/all gestures and poses for moderation purposes.
5. Whenever interpolation between animations is added, cancelling an animation using this command should still interpolate out of it smoothly if that is what the animation is set to do.