"slender, braided ponytail" (by which I think you mean what I would call a "plait").

Oh, and just in case you didn't know, "P6 (or P5) hair" is generally understood to mean "Hair-room" hair, not just any hair used in P6. Not trying to criticise, just trying to clear up some possible confusions..

Back to your original query..

Yes, it can be done, but it's not necessarily easy. Depends on the amount of detail you want.

For a fairly distant figure, you can (porbably) just clothify the prop, constrain the verts around the join to the short hair, set it to collide with anything it might hit, set up the anim and let it rip.

For close-ups, if the animation is (as you state) very active that might even work there.
But there's a possibility that the plait (which I expect is fundamentally a tube) might flatten.

There are work-arounds for that, but that's when things get tricky.

I'd say go for it. If you have problems, post here again:-)

Cheers,
Diolma