The consciousness of metaphoric meaning has traditionally been a controversial issue. Often only novel metaphors have been assumed to be vital, whereas conventional metaphors were characterized as dead. This chapter argues that the vitality of metaphoric meaning is a matter of language in use and of speakers’ linguistic repertoires. As long as metaphoric expressions are transparent, metaphoricity can be vitalized and – by being foregrounded – become a focus of shared attention in an interaction. Metaphors may thus dynamically shift between “sleeping” and “waking,” i.e. be more or less experienced and understood as metaphors. The source domain of a “waking” metaphor is active and in the foreground of shared attention. This dynamics of metaphoric meaning is particularly evident in the interplay of speech and gesture. Presenting a microanalysis of multimodal interaction in a dance class, the chapter shows that issues of vitality are aspects of discourse dynamics and embodied meaning-making and that, consequentially, questions debating the consciousness and the processing of metaphoricity are answered by the participants in discourse themselves.