When the letter offering her an Unlimited Commission arrived, Caroline Bowditch decided to take that name at its word.

She had in mind an outdoor project, called Leaving Limbo Landing. To say that it was ambitious is to err on the side of understatement. Bowditch was determined that her vision of migration – an experience that was part of her own life story – was to be performed in air, in water and on land. It was also going to be the first work she'd created as a fully independent artist and choreographer. Unlimited possibilities – or unlimited pitfalls? She signed on the dotted line and set about gathering a team who would share the journey from sketch-pad concept to real-time performance.

Come the weekend, anyone wandering around Glasgow's Merchant City Festival can see for themselves how Bowditch's ideas have truly come together in a production that won all kinds of plaudits when it premiered, in London, earlier this month. And if you can't manage into the city centre on either Saturday or Sunday afternoon – when Leaving Limbo Landing will be installed at Wilson Street/Hutcheson Street –then look out for it in Edinburgh's St Andrew Square Garden during August, when it arrives as part of the Made in Scotland showcase on the Fringe. What's more, it's free at both locations.

"That really was one of the reasons I wanted it all to happen outdoors – even if the weather was going to be beyond my control," says Bowditch. "It means anyone can come along and see it. I'd love it if, after this, it could go on to tour round open-air festivals. I'd love to take it back to Australia, to Melbourne, which is back to where it came from really. Maybe even remake it, with migrants who've come to Australia, and use their stories in it." Her own story is, meanwhile, twined into the fabric of Leaving Limbo Landing. Not just a part of the structure and motivation, but as fragments of text woven into a soundscore composed by Christopher Benstead that she describes as "beautiful, moving, but not soppy or soggy, or morose".

So what is that story? Some 10 years ago, Bowditch got on a plane out of Melbourne and came to the UK. "I fell in love," she says. "And I moved to the UK to get married. Quite crazy... I did that for a little while and then discovered I wasn't the marrying type at all." This chapter in her past is retold with volleys of Bowditch's rich and juicy chuckles. What follows has a more serious edge to it. It's the basis for what, in her choreography, she calls limbo. Despite everything, she decided to stay in the UK. But she then found it very hard to settle, to land, in any meaningful or stable way.

"None of the qualifications I had from Australia were necessarily relevant in the UK," she continues. "I decided I had this opportunity to re-invent myself, and I started beginning to 'ground' myself by going back to the things I loved. I had trained as a singer, so I went back to music. I joined women's choirs and started making connections there. And I went back to dance because my first degree had been in performing arts. I'd been involved in dance in Australia, but in a very community-based kind of way. I had dreamed about doing it professionally, but I never had."

She adds: "Maybe now I could. I went back to what was familiar, and carved my way through. Looking back, I lived in limbo for the first 18 months I was in the UK. It was as if I couldn't touch down, couldn't make contact with anything solid. It was this thing of 'I couldn't go back, and I couldn't go forward...' It was like being in a state of suspended animation. So when I started thinking about Leaving Limbo Landing, it had to have air and water in it. Elements where you can be, but with no solid ground."

Even before the piece had its London showing, Bowditch kept encountering people whose experiences chimed in with her own. She gathered stories from a dozen East Londoners, some of whom had been forced to flee their homeland – "that made me think about 'choice' and the need to survive as a reason for leaving," she says. "It's not always about looking for an adventure, or – like I did – just following your heart, and doing something very extreme." When she came to generating movement with the dancers and the aerialists, that idea of "choice/no choice" was one of the phrases she used as a stimulus for the whole group. Displacement and settling were other strands. So were the notions of re-invention and of leaving traces behind the world. "I definitely didn't have that kind of awareness before," she says. "I never thought much about what I leave in my wake, but that aspect of life has become clearer to me as I've got older."

In fact, there are dancers, choreographers and audiences all across the UK and beyond who have gained immeasurably from their encounters with Bowditch, not least from the visionary work she did as Dance Agent for Change with Dundee-based Scottish Dance Theatre (SDT). As a disabled dance-maker, Bowditch has consistently led by her own example: performing and touring with SDT as well as various mixed-ability companies, making impressive forays into short, small-scale choreographies while pushing herself to develop new skills at a professional level – her photographs of East Londoners featured in an exhibition tied in with Leaving Limbo Landing (which is, itself, part of London 2012 Cultural Olympiad).

"I think we've all realised as we've been making this piece," says Bowditch, "that in order to move forward, you have to let go. It's an essential part of landing. I had to stop trying to make Newcastle, where I lived for some time, be like Melbourne. And I had to stop trying to make Dundee be Newcastle. And that's not always easy or comfortable. But if you don't – you're going to be in limbo."

Caroline Bowditch is now based in Glasgow. "I got my flat two months ago, but we've been on tour for weeks so I've not really been there – I'm in the process of landing, though."

Merchant City Festival showings of Leaving Limbo Landing are 1.30pm/3.45pm/6pm (Saturday July 28) and 1.30pm/4pm (Sunday July 29).