Sure. The ControlledAnimation widget has a property playback that you can set within any stateful widget. There are several Playback types, like Playback.PAUSE (that you would use as initial state) and Playback.PLAY_FORWARD (you would set this, when something triggered).

You can find more aboutPlayback at the documentation.

Also there is an example I planned for a future article that uses exactly what you are trying to do.