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By Dan Leone

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YOU HAVE TO be willing to let go of preconceptions of normalcy when you go to a Mary Armentrout Dance Theater concert. Armentrout has a skewed and often hilarious perspective on the ordinary, as evidenced by last year's Psychopathology of Everyday Life, which set the tone for the types of works her residency at the Lab has enabled her to pursue. She has said that her latest, Blue Sofa, puts under the microscope five characters whose lives are less than perfect despite the fact that they are filled with Ikea furniture, Oreo cookies, and Wonder Bread. Armentrout likes to strip away the layers of pretense, contradictions, and obsessions in which we wrap ourselves and that inevitably screw up our relationships. She does so with an understated, deadpan sense of humor and the help of some friends: filmmaker Jennifer Maytorena Taylor, musician Merlin Coleman, and singer Darcy Dunn. Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m., 2948 16th St., S.F. $10-$15. (415) 864-8855. (Rita Felciano)