Have you tried it with daggers in your character’s hands? (Various weapon emotes only become available when you have the relevant weapon drawn.)
100% agree. All emotes that the player knows should automatically be available to use with thralls. (The animations already exist, the list of emotes known already exists, the capability for thralls to perform emotes already exists - the game actually hasa to maintain two separate lists of emotes in order to have players and thralls not be able to perform all the same emotes.)
I agree - it would be a really good idea if the description said that you have to have the weapon in hand - it took me a while to figure out some of the emotes I have (like the two-handed sword emote - leaning on the sword; two-handed mace - resting it back on the shoulder; one handed weapons - sword flourish/obi-ani spin) - they all turned out to need having the weapon in hand. (It might be worth going through your weapons, and try to see if you have emotes for any of the others - i think some of the ones I’ve got probably came from the battlepass - so it might be easy to have missed them.)