This issue still persists even now with 1.2.22. However, one of these solutions solves it very easily.
After trying all the solutions mentioned here I wanted to specifically highlight cocoggu's suggestion to ac360 as it is by far the most concise and it "just works".
As he suggests, simply adding the ng-hide class to the offending element resolves the problem immediately. - It prevents the initial animation glitch and allows all subsequent animations to behave as expected.
Working Solution thanks to cocoggu
<div id="offending-element" class="ng-hide"></div>
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