Updating DataWidget without triggering redraw

I have the following situation:

On my page there is a DataView widget items with custom html template and heavy use of css animations (hover, clicking on button expands the item container with animation and so on) .

However when i update the state of the item, the html template is redrawn and the animations play again which is very annoying behavour.

Is there a way to update the state of an item without triggering a redrawing of the html template?