It will certainly work, but whether or not its suggested depends on a few factors. First, realize that you'd be starting with a ton of yeast and probably way over-pitching, which is why a lot of people will wash their yeast first before pitching the barleywine. All it requires is rinsing the yeast out of the fermenter, letting the trub settle out, and then you can repitch the washed yeast. There are a bunch of calculators like Mr. Malty that will let you figure out how much of the yeast cake to use after washing.
Second, depending on how concerned you are with trub, you might wind up with a lot of protein and hop debris in the IPA yeast cake, another good reason to wash the yeast. Personally, I try to whirlpool but don't sweat getting some trub into my fermenter (I figure it all settles out anyways), so I'd definitely want to wash the yeast.
Finally, if you're looking at the idea because you've already got an IPA ready to bottle and want to use that yeast, you're kind of stuck. On the other hand, if you're planning ahead, you may want to make sure that whatever first batch you decide on is reasonably low on the alcohol side. A pale ale/IPA that's around 5-6% is probably fine, but you probably don't want to first brew a huge 8% IPA and then toss that yeast into a barleywine. It will probably work, I just prefer not to over-stress my yeast if I can help it.